Two such towering ego’s were unlikely to remain close for long and by the mid ‘60s Perry and Dodd fell out prompting Perry to release the Dodd baiting I Am The Upsetter – and earning Perry a walloping from the imposing impresario in the process (although they did reconcile before Dodds recent death in). Perry then began working with Joe Gibbs, for whom he wrote songs and produced artists such as Errol Dunkley and the Pioneers before also parting company with Gibbs and going on to release a dig at his latest ex-employer on the early classic Perry cut People Funny Boy in 1968. In the same year Perry set up his own Upsetter label with help from Clancy Eccles and immediately began having hits securing a contract with Trojan – who released his records in the UK - along the way.

Perry’s next step on the road to immortality was assured when he then began working with The Wailers (as well as having his own UK hit in 1969 with Return Of Django) producing such classic Wailer moments as Small Axe and Duppy Conqueror – far better versions incidentally than the later, better known, Island mixes. Over 100 singles were released on Upsetter between 1969 and 1974 including a series of frankly lunatic instrumentals where Perry began to seriously experiment and push the limitations of the studio to it’s furthest limits. What followed would be held up by some (not least Perry himself) as the first ever dub album, something fans of King Tubby, Clive Chin and various others refute, and if the facts tend more towards an ongoing bouncing of ideas back and forth between all the main players of the era there is little doubt Perry’s input was of immense importance and is heard to best effect on the mighty Blackboard Jungle album (1973), which if not the first dub album was bloody close, and some insist, the best.

Later the following year Perry opened his own Black Ark studio at 5 Cardiff Crescent, Kingston and began to use studio technology in the most remarkable and innovative way employing phase shifters and rudimentary drum machines, and even using primitive samples form television creating sounds all the more remarkable for the fact that it was achieved in a very basic four-track studio housed in little more than a garden shed. He immediately scored a big Jamaican hit with Junior Byles' Curly Locks and in 1975 his production of Susan Cadogan's lovers rock classic, Hurt So Good, found him back in the UK charts. This period of successful activity however also saw the more erratic side of his nature given more leeway and in 1980 the Black Ark studio was destroyed, some believe by the increasingly delusional Perry himself, others that Perry was caught in the middle of local gang problems, but whatever the truth - and Perry will happily offer a different opinion on the subject every time he is asked - the prolific reggae innovator cut and ran, first to the UK, then the Netherlands and finally Switzerland where he married a Swiss millionaires (not so barmy then).

He has since released many, often patchy, often outright demented, albums but only a fool would dismiss the possibility that the man once described by Bob Marley as ‘a genius’ had no more to contribute to the history of reggae, and whatever happens his position as a producer, arranger, writer, innovator and guiding force throughout some of the most exciting periods of Jamaican music is unquestionable.
Andy Basire