Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry & His Black Ark Studio, Kingston, Jamaica
by drezz
7th March 2025
A lot has been written about the man, the myth, the legend ....Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, some truth, some certainly hyperbole, some outright fabrication. Well, we’re not here to get into too much of the wild tales and high jinx, as much as go into the music music making, the records, the approach, and of course, those glory years and amazing sounds that emanated from Perry’s classic Black Ark Recording studio from the years 1973 to the late 1970s, and try to peel away some of that mystique and reveal the story, process and techniques behind some of those seminal records and sonic masterpieces.
Lee Perry started his musical journey as a runner for ‘Coxsone’ Dodd of Studio One fame, in the late 50s, performing tasks connected with the working of Dodd’s sound systems which would rock the street parties of the time, but he quickly gravitated to recording, eventually cutting more than 30 ska and rocksteady records for Dodd’s legendary Studio One records. Perry showed promise early on, earning his nickname ‘Scratch’ from one of his earliest productions, the track; ‘Chicken Scratch’.
Disagreements with Coxsone led to Perry defecting to Joe Gibbs Amalgamated Records, where he continued recording, but again, disagreements ensued and Perry set up his own label Upsetter records, and started working with a consistent group of backing musicians (The Upsetters), and he also used the name ‘Upsetter’ as a description for himself in a promotional capacity as his ‘nom-de plume’ eventually leading to a breakout hit ‘People Funny Boy’. The track garnered widespread success, had its own distinctive style, featured unusual sounds, arguably the first ‘sample’ in a tune (a crying baby!) and had a faster, pumping beat than ska and rocksteady records of the time, and arguably it could be described as one, if not the very first, ‘Reggae’ record. From ’68 to ’72 he worked with the Upsetters and crafted many recordings, of notable success, and became known for a particular, innovative sound and vibe to his output.
Around this time Perry started working with the Wailers, and helped them arrange their vocal stylistics, harmonies, and sound, which set up a template of sorts for them, and would serve them well into the future. Bob Marley lived with Perry for a time and worked extremely closely with him. Perry talks of this time in interviews saying it was a time of spiritual messages for him and Marley and a time of transformation for them both where they could do no wrong. Some of his recordings with them from around this time are seen as seminal, and some of the rawest, and authentically inspired they ever committed to tape, and are still loved by aficionados to this day, being for some, still, a standout moment in time, even after the massive global success and adulation that followed some few years later, after signing with Chris Blackwell and Island Records, and global superstardom beckoned. Those Lee Perry Wailers recordings are awesome and still stand proud, authentic, visceral and distinctly Jamaican, as opposed to the somewhat polished, and commercialised sound present later in the story of Bob Marley and The Wailers. To many they still represent the most hallowed ground, and the high point in the recorded output of Bob Marley and The Wailers.
Black Ark Studio was a modest and unassuming structure that stood behind Perry’s family home in Kingston's Washington Gardens neighborhood. Unlike the major studios in Jamaica and elsewhere at the time, The Black Ark was a somewhat modest affair, very DIY in true Lee Perry style, always one to do things in his own unique way, and, the studio, although limited in resources, this, if anything, made for quite an idiosyncratic and particularly singular sound, production approach, and process, which earned the attention of both Perry’s peers in Kingston, and indeed, within time, the attention of those much further afield around the world. This was the stuff of legend brewing in that backyard, created by the eccentric man who’d outgrown the other studios of the time, venturing into his own obscure sonic and increasingly unhinged and vaguely ritualistic sonic worlds. It seems a good time to intervene here with some talk of the unorthodox approach taken by Perry in pursuit of making records from this point on when the Black Ark was established and started putting stuff out there into the wider world. It’s impossible not to get into it really. Perry had a particular way of doing things, and it was quite different from his peers. The anecdotes and Lee “Scratch’ Perry stories abound, and there’s plenty of tall tales, hearsay, and lurid tales from this era floating around; The prolific ganja smoking and blowing of ganga on the speakers during the sessions, the chicken wire around the drum booth to get a certain sound, the burying of mics in the ground at the base of trees in the garden outside the studio, to get a certain kind of thump for a kick drum and/or percussion sound in a track. There’s the phenomena of ’special’ sound effects that only appeared on Lee Perry records, such as the ‘Cow Mooing’ sound which seems to crop up aplenty around this era, sounds from field recordings, miking up the television and recording it. Perry’s approach to sound design was deeply unorthodox. He incorporated an array of unconventional sounds into his music, including the aforementioned cries of babies, falling rain, shattered glass, and animal noises. The infamous “mooing cow” effect heard on Black Ark recordings was not an actual cow but rather the baritone voice of Watty Burnett channeled through a tin foil-laced cardboard tube.
He also engaged in ritualistic behavior during recording sessions, believing that the spiritual energy of his environment directly influenced the music. He spoke many times of how the studio was a living, breathing entity in its own right. He would often chant incantations, burn candles and incense, and also blow ganja smoke onto his tapes, convinced that these actions imbued his recordings with mystical properties. The spiritual overtones and influences cannot be understated here during this period, and indeed for the rest of Perry’s life and career. A developing fascination with Rastafarianism in Jamaica at the time seeped into all things Reggae, and the Black Ark was no exception to this influence. Perry’s work subsequently has always echoed biblical references and ritualistic spirituality throughout his lyrics, rants, interviews and messaging from this time onwards. His mother had strong African traditions originating from her Yoruba ancestry, which obviously had a profound effect on him, manifesting in his works and art, and along with the other Biblical, Rasta, and ‘Cosmic’ influences combined to make a potent blend of spiritual expression in everything he did from the Black Ark years onwards. The Black Ark period was an artistic awakening for Perry which made this time a turning point and golden age of art, music, and expression for him. The sheer output of the man, and the amount of music created and recorded by him at this time was staggering. Almost 24/7 output with up to 20 tracks a week from ’73 to the late ‘70s were pouring out of the studio and going out into the world.
With all these influences at play, his Black Ark Studio became the epicenter of all his experimental techniques. Despite its rudimentary equipment, Perry transformed the studio into a sacred space where groundbreaking music was created, shaping the future of production methods in reggae, dub, and beyond. The Black Ark became a legendary creative hub, producing music for reggae greats such as Bob Marley & The Wailers, Junior Murvin, Max Romeo, The Congos, Augustus Pablo, and many, many others.
There’s a wealth of incredible recordings from this era to consider when talking about the Black Ark years, all of them oozing with the unique LSP production vibes. As I write this, there is, in the marketplace now, so many original singles, albums, and reissues to choose from, but The excellent ‘Arkology’ compilation is perhaps a good place to start, as it contains a mammoth collection of classics from this very era, containing such standout tracks by Max Romeo, Devon Irons, The Upsetters, The Heptones, The Congos, Junior Murvin, Errol Walker, and Lee Perry himself among others. Junior Murvin’s ‘Police & Thieves’, Max Romeo’s ‘One Step Forward’, Augustus Pablo’s ‘Vibrate On’, The Congos ‘Congoman’, Errol Walker ‘In These Times’, and Lee Perry’s ‘Dreadlocks In Moonlight’ being some standouts, but there’s so many more, the whole album is a treasure trove of marvellous cuts from a golden time and place, however, the output of these years is huge and there is so much more material out there, so, for those unfamiliar with all of it, go out and explore, it really is a treasure trove of all-time-classic music.
The first Perry album that I ever owned from this time, released in ‘75, was ‘Kung Fu Meets The Dragon’ and from the very first vocal delivery of the title track ‘’This Is Kung Fu…..taking you on a musical review ! ’’…… on that album, right through to the very end of the record, I must admit, I was hooked, and I’d never heard anything quite like it. Tight, and supple grooves, dubbed out with a spongy, brown, taped, and taped, and taped aesthetic, with echoes, hisses, weird noises, biting percussions, cutting, other worldly, trebly guitar skanks (how did he get that sound?) and rolling, deep, mesmerising basslines and Perry’s, belching, arrested, percussive, sharp, and ‘out-there’, ‘kinky’ vocal delivery, it’s just one of a dozen all time classic albums delivered around this time. Don’t even get me started on ‘Super Ape’ and the incredible ‘Heart Of The Congos’ (Which may be the pinnacle of all things Black Ark IMHO!). The Congos masterpiece is a testament to the genius of Perry and a worthy contender for the highest of high points in Black Ark output. Revolving around the vocal harmonies and stylistics of Cedric Minton, Roy Johnson, and Watty Burnett, the album is a heavy hitter, with musical personnel contributions from Sly Dunbar, Ernest Ranglin, Boris Gardiner, Gregory Isaacs, and The Meditations amongst others. The sheer intricacy and layered textures of the record are impeccable, the hissing, bleeding treble of the percussions, the bass motifs, the soaring vocals and ensemble arrangements, the melodies, the pure celebratory euphoria and headiness, and in moments the transcendance, and in others the downright ‘Dread’ elevate this album to a rarefied atmosphere. If you haven’t go check it now on heavy rotation. The palette of sounds employed by Perry on this album is dense and sublime and staggering, and it deserves its place in the pantheon of classic Jamaican music.
Musical rhythm sections and instrumental backing tracks were performed live in the room with everyone playing together. This is a staple sound of most Reggae music around this time. There is spill, there is room sound, but that’s the sound of the music, that’s what we’re used to hearing when we hear this roots Reggae music from this era. The guitars, bass and electric keys were all going through their amps in the room. The drums were recorded in the booth, maybe with the door open, maybe not. Vocals were overdubbed after. It is possible some tracks were cut completely live, vocals included. On many ‘dub’ versions from around this time, you can hear ‘ghost’ vocals from the original mix, underneath the new ‘toaster’ vocals. This is probably down to the fact that the original vocal was cut live with the band, and even though the vocal track is muted on the console, there is ‘spill’ from other mics that were live on the original session. It’s a feature of many tracks from this era, and particularly from era specific Black Ark recordings.
Apart from the ‘loose’ atmosphere of ganga smoking and rum drinking, along with the prevalent rasta vibes of the time, as we get into the ‘70s, there are perhaps many reasons why these records sound the way they do, so it’s perhaps a good idea not to get too caught up in the pure technical aspects of equipment and so on, but in the greater picture, and general holistic approach of all the other elements of the production process.
A major contributory factor of the sound of the records would stem from the fact that there was a lot of tape bouncing, and track reduction going on.
It goes like this: You fill up three out of four tracks with drum, bass, keys, whatever….. balance and mix them correctly on your console, then route these tracks back into the tape recorder and re-record those tracks over to the spare, unused fourth track of the four track machine, that way you get more free tracks to record on, i.e: tracks one, two, and three, which are the ones you just freed up by the ‘bouncing’. There are other ways of doing the same thing, e.g: You could just record and fill all four tracks on the multi track machine, then record the mixed output onto another tape recorder, and then re-record these tracks back into the four track from the other recorder, and, at the same time also do an overdub or two, or three, live, onto the four track, and, thus, condense multiple tracks onto one channel of the multi track machine. This way, you have multiple tracks reduced to one track and the other tracks on the machine free to continue recording. These bouncing processes introduce another layer of tape noise, and tape compression, (noise: bad, tape compression: good) and you can only get away with one or two bounces and the subsequent levels of tape degradation realistically before things get too hissy, and too sepia, and you start getting into trouble with noise floor, and the general quality of things goes sideways, but Perry obviously had his own methodology here, and there are ways of working it if you’re a skilled engineer, and you know your gear well, and I’ve heard him talking vaguely in interview about how he excited certain things like percussion, and hi-hats by eq’ing judiciously in the bouncing process, and I have a feeling when listening to certain aspects of the ‘Heart of the Congos’ album that certain very trebly hi-hats sound like they’ve been excessively eq’d to avoid too much level on the way back in, in order to mitigate noise floor on a successive overdub bounce. There is an art to ‘bouncing’ and it's a bit of a lost art, but it is, potentially, or can be, a way to introduce a certain character and a certain aesthetic as exemplified excellently on these records.)
Perry himself was famously quoted: ‘’It was only four tracks on the machine, but I was picking up twenty from the extra terrestrial squad!’’. Herein lies some of the problem of sussing out quite what the man’s techniques were, as his off-the-wall, and off-the-cuff, oblique, crazy double speak in interviews when he was asked about such things is sometimes hard to decipher, and much exaggeration and hyperbole is employed ! (to put it mildly!) I’m saying that with my tongue firmly in my cheek by the way, as Perry’s public persona was half the fun and part and parcel of his artistry, and the degree of performance, an/or bona fide unhinged-ness is up for conjecture, but that’s not the point of this piece. My point is that, the denseness, and, in want of a better description, the brownness, or tapiness of the sound owes a great deal to the ‘bouncing’ processes employed here. As someone who’s worked predominantly on tape for many years, and experimented with all aspects of the process, bouncing is a lost art, and much overlooked phenomena; I mean, why would you in the modern era? but it’s bouncing that gives so many old and classic records their overall predominant sound. Think most pop records from the 60s, think Motown, think The Beatles, think Lee ’Scratch Perry’ the list is endless. The sonic characteristics, and patina applied through the process of tape bouncing is something that really cannot be affected any other way. The not-so-subtle character of tape compression, and the colour of another pass through the mixing console, amplifier stages and all the inherent electronics, doubled, and sometimes tripled in the subsequent bounces, all adds up to a sonic signature and texture that sounds like nothing else. Perry's Extraterrestrial squad’ was the careful ‘art’ of bouncing, and “flying in” carefully lined up, second tape machine ‘bounces’ onto spare tracks during the recording process. He stated himself that he would pre-prepare percussive elements and ambient noises and effects and fly them in from other machines and sources as the tracks were recorded and worked on. The intricacies of these methods, we may never know exactly, but a little experimentation if you have tape machines, goes a long way, and there are epiphany moments for everyone working with analogue gear and tape in which can yield those ‘eureka’ moments, where you achieve specific tones and texture you recognize from old records you love. I’ve been there, and I’m sure everyone working with tape today is trying to reverse engineer some of this stuff to some extent or another. On the subject of the sonic degradation, and the favourable aesthetic appeal of tape bouncing……this phenomena is probably why Perry wasn’t too much into the 8 track he received later on in the Black Ark years, as it didn’t impart the same vibe as the Teac 3340, which is a machine with a very particular sound anyway, I know, I’ve had one, and they are soft sounding machines, not like Studers, or Otaris or MCI/Sonys, but a little more ’sepia’ in comparison. In fact, ‘sepia sound’ would be an apt description of the sonic aesthetic of Lee Perry Black Ark records, and the tape bouncing and layered approach employed were a staple ingredient of that particular recipe. For all the discussions on analogue vs digital which routinely occur on Gearspace, some people really are missing the point; It’s not about blah blah blah boring conversations about reducing signal to noise ratio, tape hiss or frequency measurements or technical data, it’s about Art, with a capital A! Perry was a true artist, and what he did at that studio a large proportion of the time was pure, unadulterated creativity and magic. The results speak for themselves, and the music loving fraternity, the movers, the groovers, the shakers, and takers, and the tokers have spoken, and the people voted with their feet and their wallets to buy his productions and enjoy and savour the music!
Another consideration of the sound of those records is the fact that Perry had access to amazing, seasoned musicians. Since 1968 he worked with his ‘house’ band, ‘The Upsetters’. In reality this wasn’t a fixed crew, there were a few musical chairs changing over the years, but suffice to say, these guys were totally on it, and a formidable crew of players, this cannot be overstated enough. For anyone who’s ever played any form of classic Jamaican music, be it, Calypso, Rocksteady, Ska, Reggae, or indeed Dub, then you’ll know,... .there are ‘Rules’ and there is nuance, and a certain ‘feel’ to it. As a player, it takes discipline and a certain natural dexterity. This playability and very human touch is all over these records right down to it’s very minutiae, the details in the riffs, the timing, the feel of the swing, the rhythm of the drums against the slightly behind the beat basslines, and the very living and breathing DNA within the groove. It translates directly through to the listener in the most perfect way. These guys were absolutely great, and Perry was lucky to have them. The Upsetter house band, named after Perry’s self proclaimed ‘Upsetter’ alter ego, (a diss at Coxsone from back in the day) were originally ‘Gladdy’s All-Stars’ led by pianist Gladstone Anderson, and he started working with them in the late 60s, and it was they who recorded on the early hits and records, such as Live Injection, People Funny Boy, Django, and Return Of Django’. Certain shake-ups ensued, and due to other commitments, another band ‘The Hippy Boys’ were recruited after a short time, and this line up remained the main studio band most associated with the name ‘Upsetters’ and some of them went on to form the nucleus of Bob Marley & The Wailers in subsequent years. The band included Alva Lewis on guitar, Glen Adams on Organ, Aston ‘Family Man’ Barrett on Bass, and Carlton Barrett on Drums. By ’72 the Barrett brothers had joined with The Wailers, and Scratch brought in other musicians to replace them into the Black Ark years; These included Boris Gardiner on Bass, Mikey Richards, Sly Dunbar, and Benbow Creary on Drums, Earl ‘Chinna’ Smith on Guitar, and Winston Wright, and Keith Sterling on Keys.
The fact is, that Lee Perry had a knack of not only getting the best out of these musicians and authoritatively running the sessions, and taking care of the details of arrangement and giving the musicians proper direction, but he was something of a master in vocal stylistics, and perfecting the details of vocal harmonies, and ensemble singing. This is ever apparent when listening to the records, and the best of them, particularly The Wailers material, and The Heart Of The Congos. He was no slouch himself when it came to vocals, and delivered his occasional ‘kinky’ vocals with aplomb, and a peculiar unique, perhaps a somewhat ‘acquired taste’ delivery.
We can’t really talk about Lee Scratch Perry without mentioning his involvement in the development of Dub. Due to his extensive experimentation during the formative years of Black Ark activity, Perry mixed, and remixed many of the tunes he was working constantly on, day in, day out, in the studio. This led to a few things; There was a style developing in Jamaica at the time of using backing tracks used for specific songs, albums, and singles to be used for another singer or MC not involved in the original track to come into the studio and overdub a new vocal on top of the existing backing track. This ‘toasting’ was something Perry did himself on many tunes, and the development of this style came hand in hand with ‘Dub’ versions, which very often appeared on the B sides of current singles. A testament to his experimentation and innovative approach saw him stripping out parts of the mix, like vocals, keys, and guitars, keeping the drums and the bass going, and applying reverb and tape delay to the stripped down elements on the fly as the track was played. Working this way effectively turned the mixing desk and the studio’s effects into an instrument in its own right. Perry makes bold claims that he was the architect of Dub, and Dub Reggae, and while this is partially true, there were others in the Jamaican music scene who played their part. King Tubby was doing very similar things to existing tacks in his own studio, and very impressive they were too, but Perry and the Black Ark was very instrumental in developing Dub and hence his influence on so many things that came later cannot be overstated, including hip hop, and various forms of electronic dance music like drum and bass and other subsequent forms thereafter. Despite his other achievements, this alone cements his place in history.
As far as techniques go, Dub is all about a certain kind of performance, and dubbing out a track on tape with a console and tape is quite something, and requires a real feel for the material and plenty of rehearsal, as it is, in essence a kind of performance; it’s not the easiest thing in the world to do. Of course, ITB and with a DAW, these kind of techniques, or rather results are somewhat de rigueur, and we use them constantly in modern forms, but back then it literally was a case of muting stuff on the mixing desk, and setting up tape echo on one aux, or return channel, and spring reverb on another, and jamming with the track, rehearsing your moves and then going for a ’take’ once the desired feel or pass had been achieved, so effectively have a guitar chop (‘skank’) going for example, then quickly applying a burst of tape echo or reverb with the aux knob to that channel, and then muting the guitar, and so only leaving the ‘tail’ of the reverb or echo, which would be fed back into another channel of the desk……..also subsequent manipulation of the tape echo swell, or feedback, along with an optional feeding that fx signal back into itself on the same channel, on the fly, a somewhat risky business, and voila! Dub stylee pon the riddim! The satisfaction and seat-of-the-pants feel of this kind of dubbing, analogue style in the studio through the console onto tape is a lot of fun, and a great way to excite a track. And of course the ‘spacey’ (tripped out?) feeling you get from listening to Dub pairs perfectly with the ganja, weed ‘high’. So it's no wonder it was so popular in rasta culture and beyond.
For those looking to repeat the sound and take influence from the Lee Perry Black Ark years, and those records, most of the relevant gear is available in some form or another, the tape machines can still be had if you look long enough and scour the internet, it’s still possible, but they will likely need some maintenance and it’s not for the faint hearted, it has to be a labour of love. The Roland Space echo, or equivalent units are out there, also there are a few more modern iterations of tape echoes available. The Grampian reverb is re-manufactured as a clone by UK’s SoundGas, and they are reassuringly expensive!, but there’s a certain, somewhat ubiquitous German company, who have a reputation for market disruption and have done extremely well in modern times, particularly of recent years in the analogue synth market, who actually make a pretty authentic approximation of the old Grampian spring reverb, right down to cloning the internal circuitry quite faithfully, and they are very affordable. These reverb units were used by many studios and producers back in the day, and Perry in particular was known to send stuff through it, not only for reverb duties, but also to add distortion when bouncing, as the preamp on the reverb had a nice break-up when pushed into distortion, and so flying things into the four track from the other tape machine on bouncing passes through the reverb pre was a documented and talked about technique employed by Perry. The old Soundcraft Mixers are a little harder to come by these days, most from that generation of Soundcraft are beyond repair, or if they survived, will need extensive work to get them running well, trust me from one who scoured vintage desks for many years looking for the elusive holy grail only to give up after many disappointments and a certain amount of gear heartache! Of course, no-one working today will have access to the musicians recorded in those years, but there are some fine players out there in the world who’ve really got this stuff down now, but the substitution of a DAW and tape and analogue emulation plugins, rather than an old B division Akai/Teac 4 track tape recorder, and bouncing out once or twice, WILL make a difference to the outcome, and it wont sound quite the same. If one is committed to sounding exactly like this, the only real way is to be as close and authentic as possible equipment-wise, and to follow due process as closely as possible, but in many ways, I feel that may be missing the point somehow. The real take away from studying Perry’s Black Ark years, is that it was a moment in time, where artistic vision, and the alchemy of various conditions and elements came together somewhat chaotically to produce fantastic records that have etched themselves in our collective hearts and minds. To be a maverick, to stand apart, and to create beauty for the sake of doing something good, for good reasons, for the benefit of your fellow humanity, and after all, isn’t that what music really has always been about in its truest sense? There certainly was a special kind of soul fire burning in Lee Perry to make it happen in the way it did at that point in time, and we are all collectively richer, in so many ways, because it all happened the way it did.
As it is with all things, the Black Ark years, and its creative output eventually came to an end. Turmoil and political strife, guns, gangsters, and crime were an everyday reality in Jamaica as the 70s progressed. Perry had his pressures, and there are tales of unsavoury characters, unscrupulous dealings, and threats from underground criminal activity and bad vibes creeping into the scene by the later part of the 1970s. This, combined with Perry's increasing use of cannabis and rum to alleviate his life pressures, along with an increasing eccentricity and strange behavior, led to the demise of the Black Ark. The general story goes something like this: Perry spent the last phase of the era, increasingly detached from reality, speaking in riddles, behaving oddly, scrawling graffiti of cosmic and biblical prophecy, scripture, and very often nonsense all over the walls of the studio, scribbling out all vowels to dispel bad spirits and ghosts, before one night in, or around ’79 into the early ’80s or so, in a fit of anger, he allegedly burned down the studio. That’s how the myth goes, but I think perhaps the truth is somewhat more mundane; According to Perry family sources, and one Henk Targowski, whom I happened to know personally, and spoke to many years back on this very subject, went on record with a different story. Henk, an impresario and owner of Black Star Liner distribution, a record company based in the Netherlands, said the true story was a little different to the myth. Henk went to the Black Ark in April ’79 to talk to Perry about distributing his records, and found Perry and the studio in a bad way; Master tapes strewn all over the floor, and several water leaks that had damaged much of the studio equipment rendering things nearly useless. Perry himself showed the signs of a man unravelling, under the pressure. An attempt was made by Henk and some associates to revive the studio, and indeed throughout 1980 some progress was made. Perry erratically recorded ‘Return Of Pipecock Jackson’ the last album to be recorded at the Ark, but later on the same year, the revival was abandoned, Perry dismantled and destroyed much of the work that had been done, and one morning in 1983, the studio burned down, perhaps the result of an electrical fire, perhaps not, we may never know. The studio, one that had seen some of the most powerful and classic music ever recorded in our times, was gone, burned to the ground. A suitably apocalyptic ending for such a magical place.
Perry spent the subsequent 80s getting it back together, and enjoyed an eventual renaissance in the company of Mad Professor, and Adrian Sherwood, (Jules, the founder of Gearspace assisted on some of those Sherwood sessions) and as the years progressed he continued to perform, and make many records into the next decades, and gig extensively. A recreation of the Black Ark was made in the Royal Festival Hall on London’s SouthBank in 2003 as part of the Meltdown Festival, and Perry recorded an album with producer Daniel Boyle in 2014, where they recreated much of the equipment and techniques from the Black Ark years, to make the album ‘Lee Scratch Perry Back at the Controls’ which was arguably one of his finest in his later years.
We lost Lee Perry in 2021, but he left a massive legacy in the history of recorded music and art, and the Black Ark years stand out in a career steeped in amazing works and classic recordings, respected for their unique character and for their elusive quality, the stuff of legend. Something to inspire and aspire to.
Lee Perry started his musical journey as a runner for ‘Coxsone’ Dodd of Studio One fame, in the late 50s, performing tasks connected with the working of Dodd’s sound systems which would rock the street parties of the time, but he quickly gravitated to recording, eventually cutting more than 30 ska and rocksteady records for Dodd’s legendary Studio One records. Perry showed promise early on, earning his nickname ‘Scratch’ from one of his earliest productions, the track; ‘Chicken Scratch’.
Disagreements with Coxsone led to Perry defecting to Joe Gibbs Amalgamated Records, where he continued recording, but again, disagreements ensued and Perry set up his own label Upsetter records, and started working with a consistent group of backing musicians (The Upsetters), and he also used the name ‘Upsetter’ as a description for himself in a promotional capacity as his ‘nom-de plume’ eventually leading to a breakout hit ‘People Funny Boy’. The track garnered widespread success, had its own distinctive style, featured unusual sounds, arguably the first ‘sample’ in a tune (a crying baby!) and had a faster, pumping beat than ska and rocksteady records of the time, and arguably it could be described as one, if not the very first, ‘Reggae’ record. From ’68 to ’72 he worked with the Upsetters and crafted many recordings, of notable success, and became known for a particular, innovative sound and vibe to his output.
Around this time Perry started working with the Wailers, and helped them arrange their vocal stylistics, harmonies, and sound, which set up a template of sorts for them, and would serve them well into the future. Bob Marley lived with Perry for a time and worked extremely closely with him. Perry talks of this time in interviews saying it was a time of spiritual messages for him and Marley and a time of transformation for them both where they could do no wrong. Some of his recordings with them from around this time are seen as seminal, and some of the rawest, and authentically inspired they ever committed to tape, and are still loved by aficionados to this day, being for some, still, a standout moment in time, even after the massive global success and adulation that followed some few years later, after signing with Chris Blackwell and Island Records, and global superstardom beckoned. Those Lee Perry Wailers recordings are awesome and still stand proud, authentic, visceral and distinctly Jamaican, as opposed to the somewhat polished, and commercialised sound present later in the story of Bob Marley and The Wailers. To many they still represent the most hallowed ground, and the high point in the recorded output of Bob Marley and The Wailers.
In 1973 Lee Perry set up on his own terms, and built The Black Ark.
With all these influences at play, his Black Ark Studio became the epicenter of all his experimental techniques. Despite its rudimentary equipment, Perry transformed the studio into a sacred space where groundbreaking music was created, shaping the future of production methods in reggae, dub, and beyond. The Black Ark became a legendary creative hub, producing music for reggae greats such as Bob Marley & The Wailers, Junior Murvin, Max Romeo, The Congos, Augustus Pablo, and many, many others.
The first Perry album that I ever owned from this time, released in ‘75, was ‘Kung Fu Meets The Dragon’ and from the very first vocal delivery of the title track ‘’This Is Kung Fu…..taking you on a musical review ! ’’…… on that album, right through to the very end of the record, I must admit, I was hooked, and I’d never heard anything quite like it. Tight, and supple grooves, dubbed out with a spongy, brown, taped, and taped, and taped aesthetic, with echoes, hisses, weird noises, biting percussions, cutting, other worldly, trebly guitar skanks (how did he get that sound?) and rolling, deep, mesmerising basslines and Perry’s, belching, arrested, percussive, sharp, and ‘out-there’, ‘kinky’ vocal delivery, it’s just one of a dozen all time classic albums delivered around this time. Don’t even get me started on ‘Super Ape’ and the incredible ‘Heart Of The Congos’ (Which may be the pinnacle of all things Black Ark IMHO!). The Congos masterpiece is a testament to the genius of Perry and a worthy contender for the highest of high points in Black Ark output. Revolving around the vocal harmonies and stylistics of Cedric Minton, Roy Johnson, and Watty Burnett, the album is a heavy hitter, with musical personnel contributions from Sly Dunbar, Ernest Ranglin, Boris Gardiner, Gregory Isaacs, and The Meditations amongst others. The sheer intricacy and layered textures of the record are impeccable, the hissing, bleeding treble of the percussions, the bass motifs, the soaring vocals and ensemble arrangements, the melodies, the pure celebratory euphoria and headiness, and in moments the transcendance, and in others the downright ‘Dread’ elevate this album to a rarefied atmosphere. If you haven’t go check it now on heavy rotation. The palette of sounds employed by Perry on this album is dense and sublime and staggering, and it deserves its place in the pantheon of classic Jamaican music.
The equipment used in the Black Ark, as stated earlier, compared to other facilities of the time in Jamaica, was primitive, but it was this primitive gear that Perry employed to magnificent effect.
Perry’s setup evolved over time, but the core elements of his studio included:
Early Equipment (1973-1975):
Upgrades (1975 onwards):
Although Perry was given a TEAC half-inch 8-track recorder in 1979, he rarely used it, preferring to stick with his four-track setup, which had become integral to the Black Ark sound. The Black Ark had a control room, a drum booth, a separate live room, with an upright piano, an electric organ (not specified, but not a Hammond)
Perry’s setup evolved over time, but the core elements of his studio included:
Early Equipment (1973-1975):
- Alice mixing console (which Perry referred to as a “toy”)
- Grampian spring reverb
- Roland Space Echo RE-201
- Marantz amplifier
- AKGs and other mostly dynamic microphones for vocals, and general duties.
- TEAC 3340 quarter-inch 4-track recorder
- TEAC 2-track recorder for mixdowns
Upgrades (1975 onwards):
- Soundcraft mixer (replacing the Alice console)
- Mutron Bi-Phase phaser (one of the first demo models available)
- Higher-quality microphones
Although Perry was given a TEAC half-inch 8-track recorder in 1979, he rarely used it, preferring to stick with his four-track setup, which had become integral to the Black Ark sound. The Black Ark had a control room, a drum booth, a separate live room, with an upright piano, an electric organ (not specified, but not a Hammond)
Musical rhythm sections and instrumental backing tracks were performed live in the room with everyone playing together. This is a staple sound of most Reggae music around this time. There is spill, there is room sound, but that’s the sound of the music, that’s what we’re used to hearing when we hear this roots Reggae music from this era. The guitars, bass and electric keys were all going through their amps in the room. The drums were recorded in the booth, maybe with the door open, maybe not. Vocals were overdubbed after. It is possible some tracks were cut completely live, vocals included. On many ‘dub’ versions from around this time, you can hear ‘ghost’ vocals from the original mix, underneath the new ‘toaster’ vocals. This is probably down to the fact that the original vocal was cut live with the band, and even though the vocal track is muted on the console, there is ‘spill’ from other mics that were live on the original session. It’s a feature of many tracks from this era, and particularly from era specific Black Ark recordings.
Apart from the ‘loose’ atmosphere of ganga smoking and rum drinking, along with the prevalent rasta vibes of the time, as we get into the ‘70s, there are perhaps many reasons why these records sound the way they do, so it’s perhaps a good idea not to get too caught up in the pure technical aspects of equipment and so on, but in the greater picture, and general holistic approach of all the other elements of the production process.
A major contributory factor of the sound of the records would stem from the fact that there was a lot of tape bouncing, and track reduction going on.
For those unfamiliar with the concept, ‘bouncing’ on tape is a technique to get more track counts out of the multi track tape recorder than it was originally designed for. So even though the tape machine at The Black Ark was only a four track machine, Perry was able to get up to 20 tracks on to tape by clever use of ‘bouncing’.
Perry himself was famously quoted: ‘’It was only four tracks on the machine, but I was picking up twenty from the extra terrestrial squad!’’. Herein lies some of the problem of sussing out quite what the man’s techniques were, as his off-the-wall, and off-the-cuff, oblique, crazy double speak in interviews when he was asked about such things is sometimes hard to decipher, and much exaggeration and hyperbole is employed ! (to put it mildly!) I’m saying that with my tongue firmly in my cheek by the way, as Perry’s public persona was half the fun and part and parcel of his artistry, and the degree of performance, an/or bona fide unhinged-ness is up for conjecture, but that’s not the point of this piece. My point is that, the denseness, and, in want of a better description, the brownness, or tapiness of the sound owes a great deal to the ‘bouncing’ processes employed here. As someone who’s worked predominantly on tape for many years, and experimented with all aspects of the process, bouncing is a lost art, and much overlooked phenomena; I mean, why would you in the modern era? but it’s bouncing that gives so many old and classic records their overall predominant sound. Think most pop records from the 60s, think Motown, think The Beatles, think Lee ’Scratch Perry’ the list is endless. The sonic characteristics, and patina applied through the process of tape bouncing is something that really cannot be affected any other way. The not-so-subtle character of tape compression, and the colour of another pass through the mixing console, amplifier stages and all the inherent electronics, doubled, and sometimes tripled in the subsequent bounces, all adds up to a sonic signature and texture that sounds like nothing else. Perry's Extraterrestrial squad’ was the careful ‘art’ of bouncing, and “flying in” carefully lined up, second tape machine ‘bounces’ onto spare tracks during the recording process. He stated himself that he would pre-prepare percussive elements and ambient noises and effects and fly them in from other machines and sources as the tracks were recorded and worked on. The intricacies of these methods, we may never know exactly, but a little experimentation if you have tape machines, goes a long way, and there are epiphany moments for everyone working with analogue gear and tape in which can yield those ‘eureka’ moments, where you achieve specific tones and texture you recognize from old records you love. I’ve been there, and I’m sure everyone working with tape today is trying to reverse engineer some of this stuff to some extent or another. On the subject of the sonic degradation, and the favourable aesthetic appeal of tape bouncing……this phenomena is probably why Perry wasn’t too much into the 8 track he received later on in the Black Ark years, as it didn’t impart the same vibe as the Teac 3340, which is a machine with a very particular sound anyway, I know, I’ve had one, and they are soft sounding machines, not like Studers, or Otaris or MCI/Sonys, but a little more ’sepia’ in comparison. In fact, ‘sepia sound’ would be an apt description of the sonic aesthetic of Lee Perry Black Ark records, and the tape bouncing and layered approach employed were a staple ingredient of that particular recipe. For all the discussions on analogue vs digital which routinely occur on Gearspace, some people really are missing the point; It’s not about blah blah blah boring conversations about reducing signal to noise ratio, tape hiss or frequency measurements or technical data, it’s about Art, with a capital A! Perry was a true artist, and what he did at that studio a large proportion of the time was pure, unadulterated creativity and magic. The results speak for themselves, and the music loving fraternity, the movers, the groovers, the shakers, and takers, and the tokers have spoken, and the people voted with their feet and their wallets to buy his productions and enjoy and savour the music!
Another consideration of the sound of those records is the fact that Perry had access to amazing, seasoned musicians. Since 1968 he worked with his ‘house’ band, ‘The Upsetters’. In reality this wasn’t a fixed crew, there were a few musical chairs changing over the years, but suffice to say, these guys were totally on it, and a formidable crew of players, this cannot be overstated enough. For anyone who’s ever played any form of classic Jamaican music, be it, Calypso, Rocksteady, Ska, Reggae, or indeed Dub, then you’ll know,... .there are ‘Rules’ and there is nuance, and a certain ‘feel’ to it. As a player, it takes discipline and a certain natural dexterity. This playability and very human touch is all over these records right down to it’s very minutiae, the details in the riffs, the timing, the feel of the swing, the rhythm of the drums against the slightly behind the beat basslines, and the very living and breathing DNA within the groove. It translates directly through to the listener in the most perfect way. These guys were absolutely great, and Perry was lucky to have them. The Upsetter house band, named after Perry’s self proclaimed ‘Upsetter’ alter ego, (a diss at Coxsone from back in the day) were originally ‘Gladdy’s All-Stars’ led by pianist Gladstone Anderson, and he started working with them in the late 60s, and it was they who recorded on the early hits and records, such as Live Injection, People Funny Boy, Django, and Return Of Django’. Certain shake-ups ensued, and due to other commitments, another band ‘The Hippy Boys’ were recruited after a short time, and this line up remained the main studio band most associated with the name ‘Upsetters’ and some of them went on to form the nucleus of Bob Marley & The Wailers in subsequent years. The band included Alva Lewis on guitar, Glen Adams on Organ, Aston ‘Family Man’ Barrett on Bass, and Carlton Barrett on Drums. By ’72 the Barrett brothers had joined with The Wailers, and Scratch brought in other musicians to replace them into the Black Ark years; These included Boris Gardiner on Bass, Mikey Richards, Sly Dunbar, and Benbow Creary on Drums, Earl ‘Chinna’ Smith on Guitar, and Winston Wright, and Keith Sterling on Keys.
The fact is, that Lee Perry had a knack of not only getting the best out of these musicians and authoritatively running the sessions, and taking care of the details of arrangement and giving the musicians proper direction, but he was something of a master in vocal stylistics, and perfecting the details of vocal harmonies, and ensemble singing. This is ever apparent when listening to the records, and the best of them, particularly The Wailers material, and The Heart Of The Congos. He was no slouch himself when it came to vocals, and delivered his occasional ‘kinky’ vocals with aplomb, and a peculiar unique, perhaps a somewhat ‘acquired taste’ delivery.
We can’t really talk about Lee Scratch Perry without mentioning his involvement in the development of Dub. Due to his extensive experimentation during the formative years of Black Ark activity, Perry mixed, and remixed many of the tunes he was working constantly on, day in, day out, in the studio. This led to a few things; There was a style developing in Jamaica at the time of using backing tracks used for specific songs, albums, and singles to be used for another singer or MC not involved in the original track to come into the studio and overdub a new vocal on top of the existing backing track. This ‘toasting’ was something Perry did himself on many tunes, and the development of this style came hand in hand with ‘Dub’ versions, which very often appeared on the B sides of current singles. A testament to his experimentation and innovative approach saw him stripping out parts of the mix, like vocals, keys, and guitars, keeping the drums and the bass going, and applying reverb and tape delay to the stripped down elements on the fly as the track was played. Working this way effectively turned the mixing desk and the studio’s effects into an instrument in its own right. Perry makes bold claims that he was the architect of Dub, and Dub Reggae, and while this is partially true, there were others in the Jamaican music scene who played their part. King Tubby was doing very similar things to existing tacks in his own studio, and very impressive they were too, but Perry and the Black Ark was very instrumental in developing Dub and hence his influence on so many things that came later cannot be overstated, including hip hop, and various forms of electronic dance music like drum and bass and other subsequent forms thereafter. Despite his other achievements, this alone cements his place in history.
As far as techniques go, Dub is all about a certain kind of performance, and dubbing out a track on tape with a console and tape is quite something, and requires a real feel for the material and plenty of rehearsal, as it is, in essence a kind of performance; it’s not the easiest thing in the world to do. Of course, ITB and with a DAW, these kind of techniques, or rather results are somewhat de rigueur, and we use them constantly in modern forms, but back then it literally was a case of muting stuff on the mixing desk, and setting up tape echo on one aux, or return channel, and spring reverb on another, and jamming with the track, rehearsing your moves and then going for a ’take’ once the desired feel or pass had been achieved, so effectively have a guitar chop (‘skank’) going for example, then quickly applying a burst of tape echo or reverb with the aux knob to that channel, and then muting the guitar, and so only leaving the ‘tail’ of the reverb or echo, which would be fed back into another channel of the desk……..also subsequent manipulation of the tape echo swell, or feedback, along with an optional feeding that fx signal back into itself on the same channel, on the fly, a somewhat risky business, and voila! Dub stylee pon the riddim! The satisfaction and seat-of-the-pants feel of this kind of dubbing, analogue style in the studio through the console onto tape is a lot of fun, and a great way to excite a track. And of course the ‘spacey’ (tripped out?) feeling you get from listening to Dub pairs perfectly with the ganja, weed ‘high’. So it's no wonder it was so popular in rasta culture and beyond.
For those looking to repeat the sound and take influence from the Lee Perry Black Ark years, and those records, most of the relevant gear is available in some form or another, the tape machines can still be had if you look long enough and scour the internet, it’s still possible, but they will likely need some maintenance and it’s not for the faint hearted, it has to be a labour of love. The Roland Space echo, or equivalent units are out there, also there are a few more modern iterations of tape echoes available. The Grampian reverb is re-manufactured as a clone by UK’s SoundGas, and they are reassuringly expensive!, but there’s a certain, somewhat ubiquitous German company, who have a reputation for market disruption and have done extremely well in modern times, particularly of recent years in the analogue synth market, who actually make a pretty authentic approximation of the old Grampian spring reverb, right down to cloning the internal circuitry quite faithfully, and they are very affordable. These reverb units were used by many studios and producers back in the day, and Perry in particular was known to send stuff through it, not only for reverb duties, but also to add distortion when bouncing, as the preamp on the reverb had a nice break-up when pushed into distortion, and so flying things into the four track from the other tape machine on bouncing passes through the reverb pre was a documented and talked about technique employed by Perry. The old Soundcraft Mixers are a little harder to come by these days, most from that generation of Soundcraft are beyond repair, or if they survived, will need extensive work to get them running well, trust me from one who scoured vintage desks for many years looking for the elusive holy grail only to give up after many disappointments and a certain amount of gear heartache! Of course, no-one working today will have access to the musicians recorded in those years, but there are some fine players out there in the world who’ve really got this stuff down now, but the substitution of a DAW and tape and analogue emulation plugins, rather than an old B division Akai/Teac 4 track tape recorder, and bouncing out once or twice, WILL make a difference to the outcome, and it wont sound quite the same. If one is committed to sounding exactly like this, the only real way is to be as close and authentic as possible equipment-wise, and to follow due process as closely as possible, but in many ways, I feel that may be missing the point somehow. The real take away from studying Perry’s Black Ark years, is that it was a moment in time, where artistic vision, and the alchemy of various conditions and elements came together somewhat chaotically to produce fantastic records that have etched themselves in our collective hearts and minds. To be a maverick, to stand apart, and to create beauty for the sake of doing something good, for good reasons, for the benefit of your fellow humanity, and after all, isn’t that what music really has always been about in its truest sense? There certainly was a special kind of soul fire burning in Lee Perry to make it happen in the way it did at that point in time, and we are all collectively richer, in so many ways, because it all happened the way it did.
As it is with all things, the Black Ark years, and its creative output eventually came to an end. Turmoil and political strife, guns, gangsters, and crime were an everyday reality in Jamaica as the 70s progressed. Perry had his pressures, and there are tales of unsavoury characters, unscrupulous dealings, and threats from underground criminal activity and bad vibes creeping into the scene by the later part of the 1970s. This, combined with Perry's increasing use of cannabis and rum to alleviate his life pressures, along with an increasing eccentricity and strange behavior, led to the demise of the Black Ark. The general story goes something like this: Perry spent the last phase of the era, increasingly detached from reality, speaking in riddles, behaving oddly, scrawling graffiti of cosmic and biblical prophecy, scripture, and very often nonsense all over the walls of the studio, scribbling out all vowels to dispel bad spirits and ghosts, before one night in, or around ’79 into the early ’80s or so, in a fit of anger, he allegedly burned down the studio. That’s how the myth goes, but I think perhaps the truth is somewhat more mundane; According to Perry family sources, and one Henk Targowski, whom I happened to know personally, and spoke to many years back on this very subject, went on record with a different story. Henk, an impresario and owner of Black Star Liner distribution, a record company based in the Netherlands, said the true story was a little different to the myth. Henk went to the Black Ark in April ’79 to talk to Perry about distributing his records, and found Perry and the studio in a bad way; Master tapes strewn all over the floor, and several water leaks that had damaged much of the studio equipment rendering things nearly useless. Perry himself showed the signs of a man unravelling, under the pressure. An attempt was made by Henk and some associates to revive the studio, and indeed throughout 1980 some progress was made. Perry erratically recorded ‘Return Of Pipecock Jackson’ the last album to be recorded at the Ark, but later on the same year, the revival was abandoned, Perry dismantled and destroyed much of the work that had been done, and one morning in 1983, the studio burned down, perhaps the result of an electrical fire, perhaps not, we may never know. The studio, one that had seen some of the most powerful and classic music ever recorded in our times, was gone, burned to the ground. A suitably apocalyptic ending for such a magical place.
Perry spent the subsequent 80s getting it back together, and enjoyed an eventual renaissance in the company of Mad Professor, and Adrian Sherwood, (Jules, the founder of Gearspace assisted on some of those Sherwood sessions) and as the years progressed he continued to perform, and make many records into the next decades, and gig extensively. A recreation of the Black Ark was made in the Royal Festival Hall on London’s SouthBank in 2003 as part of the Meltdown Festival, and Perry recorded an album with producer Daniel Boyle in 2014, where they recreated much of the equipment and techniques from the Black Ark years, to make the album ‘Lee Scratch Perry Back at the Controls’ which was arguably one of his finest in his later years.
We lost Lee Perry in 2021, but he left a massive legacy in the history of recorded music and art, and the Black Ark years stand out in a career steeped in amazing works and classic recordings, respected for their unique character and for their elusive quality, the stuff of legend. Something to inspire and aspire to.
