From lifting sound system boxes to producing songs by marquee acts like Gregory Isaacs, Leroy Scarlett has covered a lot of ground in the music business.

Scarlett is the driving force behind the Reggae Powerhouse Band, a Kingston unit that recently released Reggae Powerhouse Band And Friends Series 1, their first album.

Distributed by Tuff Gong International, it contains 16 songs including four collaborations with Michael Rose, Black Uhuru, Sizzla and Luciano.

“It feels very good to get the album out, it was a long time in the making. It was hard choosing which tracks to put on the album as there were originally 23 tracks, so this is why the album is called Series 1. There is more to come,” Scarlett told the Jamaica Observer’s Splash.

‘Friends’ is the biggest project to date for the quartet which has a rotation of singers including Cordel Agen Dunnah from Antigua, Pernel Winchester of Tobago, and Bless Eye, who is based in the United Kingdom.

A diverse cast of vocalists appear on songs like Awah and a cover of Chuck Berry’s Johnny Be Good.

“Every song on the album I chose to make. Johnny Be Good is a song I’ve loved from way back and I always told myself I was going to get somebody to cover it. So I made that track and sent it to the artiste and told him that’s what I want. That song does something for me,” said Scarlett.

Another cover is Stalk of Sensimilla, done with Black Uhuru, who did the original in the early 1980s. Roots is done with Luciano, Freedom with Rose, and Nothing Nah Gwaan alongside Sizzla.

Scarlett is from Lawrence Tavern in rural St Andrew, but lived for some time as a youth in Trench Town. He started out in music during the early 1970s moving speaker boxes for Kilamanjaro, then became a singer with that sound system.

After a short-lived recording career in the late 1980s, Scarlett moved into production, releasing songs by a number of artistes such as Isaacs, Frankie Paul, Sizzla, and Capleton.

He got out of the business for a while before Duckie Simpson of Black Uhuru encouraged him to make a comeback with a band. Reggae Powerhouse Band was formed in 2017.

“Music is my life, my passion. Every day I’m coming up with new ideas. I started as a singer, then became a producer as I saw that was where the money was, then that all went downhill so I stepped away for a while. But music is in my blood so I had to come back,” said Scarlett.