Lee “Scratch” Perry Net Worth At The Time Of His Death

Lee “Scratch” Perry Net Worth

Lee “Scratch” Perry net worth: This is one of the questions that people ask the most about Lee “Scratch” Perry, and although they always end up answering it on other pages with an “I don’t know, you know” or “it depends” if there are some estimates that various web portals mention.




As of 2021, Lee “Scratch” Perry’s net worth is estimated to be around $3 million at the time of his death. However, it is not possible to make an exact calculation about the fortune of this great record producer. We have estimated Lee “Scratch” Perry’s net worth, salary, money, income, and assets.



Name Lee “Scratch” Perry
Net Worth: $3 Million
Date of Birth: Mar 20, 1936 (85 years old)
Gender: Male
Height: 5 ft 6 in (1.68 m)
Profession: Musician, Record producer
Nationality: Jamaica

Lee “Scratch” Perry Died

Today, August 29, Lee “Scratch” Perry, in Kingston, Jamaica, passed away at the age of 85.

Rainford Hugh Lee “Scratch” Perry, also known as “Pipecock Jackson”, “The Mighty Upsetter”, “Litte Lee” and “The Rockstone” was a genialoid and eccentric guy, who did not hurt to publicly proclaim his dislike to work and his fiery passion for dominoes, a game in which he rose to prominence with champion manners and whose technical secrets kept him busy for most of his school years. Always on the brink of mental imbalance, and sometimes a step beyond the brink, Lee Perry is also already, and above all, a genuine legend of Jamaican popular music, the greatest and most brilliant visionary, producer, and sound engineer. original and prolific in the history of reggae and one of the capital figures of popular music of the last three decades.

From Kendal to Kingston

Lee Perry held different versions, each more absurd, about its origins. Since he was born on the planet Jupiter or in some undetermined place in the sky, until he came from Africa or his body was the result of the abduction by aliens of an undocumented corpse. However, Ina Davis and Henry Perry affirm a much more prosaic origin: their son was born in Kendal, a rural village in the interior of the British colony called Jamaica, the third of four siblings, on Friday, March 20, 1936, in an environment of extraordinary poverty. Abused at school by teachers and classmates, because of his short stature and eccentric ideas, he managed to escape by feeding his two great hobbies: dominoes and dance music.

In the early 1960s, he settled in the suburbs of Kingston, where he met producer and businessman Coxsone Dodd, owner of the legendary Studio One, one of the temples of Jamaican music. He soon began writing songs for protected Dodd artists such as the great Delroy Wilson, while recording some acetates in his name and working as a producer and sound engineer. Faced dog-face with Dodd’s other pupil, Prince Buster, Perry ended up leaving Studio One to work with other popes of the genre, such as his friend and sidekick Clancy Eccles or the ill-fated Joe Gibbs. In 1968, Lee Perry went independent, founded his own company, Upsetter Records. Months later, he produced a handful of essential recordings in the career of Bob Marley & The Wailers (then only The Wailers), later released in the West under different titles; worked with other glorious reggae pioneers (Dave Barker, Dennis Alcapone, Big Youth, Junior Byles, U Roy, Dr. Alimantado, Dillinger, Augustus Pablo, King Tubby) and was paving the way that would culminate in the opening of the famous recording studio Black Ark, the Mecca of classic reggae.

Kingston to Zurich

It was in 1974 that Peery opened the Black Ark studio in the back room of a store located in Washington Gardens, Kingston. There, with a rudimentary four-track table and a great deal of imagination, the magician’s peculiar recording methods took shape. Perry liked to turn the sessions with the artists into memorable celebrations full of laughter, clapping, screaming, jungle echoes, original samples, smoke, and huge ganja (marijuana) firecrackers. His most celebrated eccentricities include cleaning the recorder heads with his own shirt.or spraying the moving tapes with ganja smoke, in an effort to capture all the details of the magical, dirty, and unique sound that treasured the grimy walls of Black Ark: “I did Jamaican rock, and you can’t label my music because there was no other that sounded like it. I never wasted my time on stupid things. They call it reggae, but only for political and economic interests. From that fabulous tidal wave came irresistible records such as Dub revolution (Lee Perry & The Upsetters), War Inna Babylon (Max Romeo), Polices and thieves (Junior Murvin), or The Heart of the Congos (The Congos). But what we consider masterful today (compiled in the triple CD Arkology, an essential anthology), then it did not work commercially and one fine day in 1980, Perry set fire to his studios and emigrated to the United Kingdom, where his albums were always well received, distributed by Trojan, and where he had a legion of fans, including producers Adrian Sherwood and Mad Professor.

Pampered by the European public, Lee Perry met on one of his trips to Kingston Mireille Ruegg, a Swiss millionaire, reggae fan, and ex-girlfriend of Max Romeo, with whom he shared numerous beliefs and hobbies (his hatred of taxes, his rare spirituality, his excessive interest in extraterrestrial life, flying saucers and ufology in general). On November 30, 1991, Mireille and Perry were married in a Hare Krishna temple in Zurich, with Adrian Sherwood as godfather.

Separated from alcohol, semi-vegetarian, Perry installed his new recording studio, called Blue Ark (“the secret laboratory”) in the basements of the luxurious family mansion, in a residential neighborhood located next to Lake Zurich.

Since then, he has continued to publish more or less brilliant or parodic records, and fueling his legend with crazy concerts and statements that mimicked the most egotistical and outlandish Dalí: «I feel driven to continue down a path only if that path pays me dividends. corresponding. I had to close the doors of reggae and prostitute my music when I realized that I had created Frankenstein and that he wanted to devour me. Now I know that Frankenstein has come back to ask me to save reggae, but I am bigger than him because I believed him.

In 2000, the specialized journalist David Katz published the definitive biography of Lee Perry in the Scottish publisher Payback Press, under the title The Genius of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry-People funny boy. Lee Perry died on August 29, 2021, Sunday morning, at Noel Holmes Hospital in Jamaica, from causes not yet disclosed.

Amelia Warner writes all the Latest Articles. She mostly covers Entertainment topics, but at times loves to write about movie reviews as well.

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