New York (AFP)
Lee "Scratch" Perry, producer who took reggae to conquer the world by guiding Bob Marley, died Sunday at age 85, Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness announced.
"Lee 'Scratch' Perry died this morning while in Noel Holmes Hospital. He was 85," the Prime Minister said in a statement posted on his twitter account.
"Sorcier du reggae", "Salvador Dali du dub" (continuation of reggae based on echoes), "The Upsetter" ("The pain in the ass"): nicknames abound for this elusive and striking figure in the history of the music.
Perry pushed Marley in the studio out of his gangue to rise to the top.
"Without him, Bob Marley might have remained an orphan arrow in his bow," wrote producer specialist Francis Dordor in Les Inrockuptibles.
Born in 1936 in Kendal, Jamaica, Rainford Hugh "Lee" Perry left school at age 15 before moving to Kingston in the 1960s.
"My father worked on the streets, my mother in the fields. We were very poor," he told British rock magazine New Musicalm Express (NME) in 1984.
"I didn't learn anything at school. I learned everything in the street".
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