Grammy Award-winning Jamaican music pioneer Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry passed on Sunday morning (August 29) at the Noel Holmes Hospital in Western Jamaica after battling illness. Born Rainford Hugh Perry in March 1936, he was 85 years old.
He died in hospital in Lucea, north-west Jamaica, local media reported.
Perry is known for his pioneering experiments in dub, which revolutionised not only reggae, but also hip hop, dance and other genres.
Perry was born in rural Jamaica in 1936 and moved to the capital Kingston in the early 1960s.
In a 1984 interview with NME magazine, he said: “My father worked on the road, my mother in the fields. We were very poor. I went to school… I learned nothing at all. Everything I have learned has come from nature.”
He started his music career in the 1950s as an assistant at a reggae music label, before moving up to become a recording artist with the same label.
Over the next seven decades Perry went on to work with a number of fellow music legends, including Bob Marley and the Beastie Boys.
He also won a Grammy in 2002, was nominated four other times – in 2007, 2008, 2010 and 2014 – and received a Jamaican national honour, the Order of Distinction.
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