Producers Cleveland 'Clevie' Browne (left) and the late Wycliffe 'Steely' Johnson. - File

The last major project in which musician/producer Wycliffe 'Steely' Johnson was involved is scheduled to be released in early 2010, according to Cleveland 'Clevie' Browne, his long-time musical partner.

Browne told The Gleaner that Memories, a tribute set, was almost complete when Johnson died in September at the age of 47. It will be distributed by VP Records.

"These are songs that inspired Steely and Clevie, songs that show another side of us," Browne told The Gleaner.

He said he and Johnson began work on Memories last December at their Studio 2000 base in St Andrew. Recording on the 12 tracks was almost complete when Johnson became ill earlier this year and left for New York for treatment.

Hits of the 1980s

This is the third tribute album by the keyboardist/drummer duo, best known for producing some of the biggest dancehall hits of the 1980s and 1990s. In 1992, they produced a Studio One cover album and in 2001, paid homage to producer Joe Gibbs on a similar compilation.

Both albums produced songs that were minor hits in the United States. The Studio One collection was released by Heartbeat Records and yielded Dawn Penn's No, No, No in 1994. Penn did the original in 1969.

The Gibbs set produced Sean Paul and Sasha's I'm Still In Love With You in 2002. That song was originally done in the 1960s by Alton Ellis.

Browne says singers Cornell Campbell, Errol Dunkley and Richie Stephens contributed songs to Memories. Campbell did Stars, which he originally cut at Studio One in the early 1970s, while Dunkley did I'll Be Back. Stephens covered Delroy Wilson's True Believer In Love.

Burt Bacharach original

Johnson and saxophonist Dean Fraser played on an instrumental version of the Burt Bacharach original, A House Is Not a Home.

Steely and Clevie first recorded together during the mid-1970s when they were members of the Roots Radics and In Crowd bands, respectively. They played on the Bob Marley song Trench Town and several of Freddie McGregor hit songs of the 1980s.

They hit their stride in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, playing on or producing hits by Shabba Ranks, Admiral Bailey, Cocoa Tea, Buju Banton, Garnet Silk, Bushman and Maxi Priest.

Wycliffe Johnson died at the Brookhaven Memorial Hospital in Suffolkc County, New York. He was diagnosed last year with kidney failure, for which he was being treated when he suffered a fatal heart attack on September 1, this year.