Bunny ‘Striker’ Lee
Jamaican music icon BORN 1941
Bunny ‘Striker’ Lee was one of the last great Jamaican record producers, a cornerstone of reggae who helped shape its sound since the late ’60s. A prolific and influential studio man, he played a pivotal role in introducing reggae to the UK in the early ’70s and taking the music global.
The first born of 10 children, Lee grew up in the Greenwich Farm district of Kingston and broke into the music business as a record plugger for Duke Reid’s Treasure Isle studio in 1962. Lee soon started producing himself, his instinctive ear for a hit coupled with a shrewd business sense scoring him his first success in 1967 with Roy Shirley’s Music Field. Hits followed with Derrick Morgan, Pat Kelly, Lester Sterling and Slim Smith, establishing Lee as a top go-to producer and earning him his ‘Striker’ nickname. Along with other ‘small axe’ soundmen like Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, from 1968-72 Lee challenged the dominance of Treasure Isle and Clement ‘Coxsone’ Dodd’s Studio One with a series of classic 45s, including Max Romeo’s Wet Dream, Delroy Wilson’s Better Must Come and John Holt’s Stick By Me. By the mid 1970s, Lee was enjoying further success with conscious roots singers Cornell Campbell, Horace Andy and Johnny Clarke, the latter’s immortal None Shall Escape The Judgement single minting the producer’s influential ‘flying cymbal’ signature sound. Around the same time, Striker and engineer friend King Tubby were revolutionising Jamaican music by creating dub as a separate art form altogether.
While Lee’s output slowed to a trickle during the 1980s, his place in the history of reggae was recognised by the Jamaican government in 2008 when he was awarded an Order Of Distinction. More recently, the ailing 79-yearold, always immaculately dressed and wearing his trademark sailor’s cap, struggled with kidney problems, eventually succumbing to heart failure on October 6.