World of Jamaican Music

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An illustrated map of the creators of Jamaican music and how they are connected.

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The Upsetters

Band. Reggae, dub

Active
1968-1980s

The Upsetters were Lee Perry's band, and the name he gave to whoever was playing for him. He took it from his own 1967 single "I Am the Upsetter," aimed at Coxsone Dodd, whom he had left.

The incarnation that matters most was the Hippy Boys, Max Romeo's old band, which became the Upsetters around 1969: Aston "Family Man" Barrett on bass, Carlton Barrett on drums, Alva "Reggie" Lewis on guitar and Glen Adams on organ. "Return of Django" reached number five in Britain in late 1969 and took the band on a British tour, playing to skinhead audiences who had arrived at Jamaican music through Trojan.

The same rhythm section backed the Wailers on the records they made with Perry, "Duppy Conqueror," "Small Axe," "Soul Rebel" and "Kaya" among them, which is where the heavier, slower shape of roots reggae is first fully audible. Bob Marley then took the Barretts into the Wailers permanently, though he and Perry stayed close and worked together again later in the decade.

The name stayed in use through the Black Ark years, attached to whatever combination Perry had in the room, including Boris Gardiner, Mikey "Boo" Richards, Winston Wright and Earl "Chinna" Smith. The dub albums issued under the Upsetters name in the 1970s, among them Super Ape, are Perry's work as much as any band's.

Last updated October 21, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. The Rough Guide places "I Am the Upsetter," "Perry's own barbed message to his former employer," among the first releases from Joe Gibbs's sessions of January 1967, and elsewhere calls it "The Upsetter." Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 76, 101. The British issue, as "The Upsetter," came out on Amalgamated in 1968. "Lee Perry - The Upsetter," Discogs, accessed October 5, 2026, https://www.discogs.com/release/1529030.
  2. The Rough Guide says Perry's session players "were in fact Max Romeo's old band the Hippy Boys," and quotes Romeo: "So I formed a band called the Hippy Boys." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 105, 128. Bradley calls the Hippy Boys "an instrumental quartet that were more or less the nucleus of the Upsetters," naming the Barretts, Adams and Lewis, and says Perry's earlier pool, organized by Gladstone Anderson, became the first Upsetters. Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 226-27.
  3. The single entered the British chart on October 4, 1969, peaked at number five and stayed fifteen weeks. "Upsetters," search results, Official Charts, accessed October 5, 2026, https://www.officialcharts.com/search/singles/return%20of%20django/. Bradley notes it at number five on the chart of November 15, 1969, one of three Trojan/B&C singles in the Top 20. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 242. Wikipedia says the record was cut by Gladstone Anderson's band and that the Hippy Boys were recruited for the British tour when Anderson's players could not go. "The Upsetters," Wikipedia, accessed October 5, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Upsetters. Katz also says the Barretts toured Britain with the Upsetters that November "despite not having played on the record itself": David Katz, "Aston 'Family Man' Barrett Obituary," Guardian, February 4, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/feb/04/aston-family-man-barrett.
  4. The Rough Guide lists "Duppy Conqueror," "Kaya" and "Small Axe" among the Wailers' records for Perry, mentions the Soul Rebels album, and says "the rhythms from the Upsetters were in an appropriate slower, 'dread' mood." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 130-31. The books disagree on the dates: the Rough Guide puts the Wailers' time with Perry between August 1970 and April 1971, and Bradley in 1969. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 138; Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 402.
  5. The Rough Guide says the Wailers "were already accustomed to playing with" the Barretts when they signed to Island, and Bradley says the brothers "were now full-time members of the Wailers' band." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 137; Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 326. Katz writes that although the Wailers stopped working with Perry at the end of 1971, "taking the core of the Upsetters with them," Marley and Perry kept a special bond, and Marley returned to him for "Jah Live," "Punky Reggae Party" and "Blackman Redemption" (in Portuguese translation): David Katz, "Lee 'Scratch' Perry: xamã musical da Jamaica, o homem-espírito da Black Ark," Revista Brasileira do Caribe 11, no. 22 (January-June 2011): 144-45, https://www.periodicoseletronicos.ufma.br/index.php/rbrascaribe/article/download/662/419/2232.
  6. Bradley names Gardiner, Richards, Wright and Chinna Smith in Perry's "fluid session crew" at the Black Ark, along with Robbie Shakespeare, Sly Dunbar, Geoffrey Chung, Augustus Pablo and others. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 326. The Rough Guide names Gardiner and Richards as the usual rhythm section after the Barretts left. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 176.
  7. The Rough Guide calls Super Ape (1976) "an atmospheric solo album from the producer," and Bradley calls it "the absolute distillation of Scratch at the Black Ark." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 225; Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 328.

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