Musical resumes don't get much more impressive than Lee "Scratch" Perry's, the Jamaican maverick credited with inventing both dub and reggae.
Now 70, Perry was a talent scout for Clement "Coxsone" Dodd's famed Studio One in the late 1950s and early '60s; he pioneered sampling with his first single, "People Funny Boy," in 1968; invented the remix with King Tubby in 1972; and produced early works by Bob Marley & The Wailers, The Heptones and The Congos.
A devout believer in God, Perry had already forsworn many of his contemporaries' hedonistic ways by the time his Black Ark studio burned down in 1979. Although evidence points to faulty wiring, Perry claims to this day that he destroyed the studio himself, acting on the same word of God that then also led him to shun alcohol and drugs and devote his life to "spiritual music." In 1989, he moved to Switzerland, where he still lives.
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