Itching to see Scratch at last

THE unfortunate cancellation last month of the Riverside Live festival in Chester-le-Street (originally scheduled for this weekend) was particularly hard for fans hoping to catch the headliner, the idiosyncratic and highly original Jamaican, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry.

Happily, all was not lost as Perry will now appear at Newcastle’s Think Tank on Sunday night .

Rainford Hugh Perry, aka The Upsetter but universally tagged as Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, can comfortably claim to be one of the true architects of reggae but more specifically the creator of dub.

Fifty years ago, Perry wrote and produced Long Shot Kick the Bucket (about a racehorse, incidentally) by the Pioneers for label boss Joe Gibbs and laid down an indelible marker in the history of the genre. Toots Hibbert’s Do the Reggay (by the Maytals) – the first written appearance of the word we now know as “reggae” – came a couple of years later when the aptly named Pioneers recorded Long Shot.

Later, Perry would be responsible for The Wailers’ landmark album, Soul Rebels (their first to be released outside of Jamaica), in 1970. He was instrumental in the success of Toots & The Maytals and for his singular work with white artists like The Clash, John Martyn and Sir Paul McCartney, among others.

He had a particularly hot streak in the early 70s when, at his Black Ark studio in Kingston, he recorded acts like Bob Marley & the Wailers, Max Romeo, the Heptones, the Congos and more. The streak was perhaps a little too hot, however; the studio was burned to the ground in 1978 and Perry himself has subse-