Atlantic Records – Memphis Flyer

It was just back in November when Memphis rapper Big Scarr, whose releases on Gucci Mane’s The New 1017 Records had already been making major chart waves, announced that he’d be extending his tour into 2023. “I am adding more dates so I can hit every city and pull up on the whole Grim Reaper Gang … Love, Big Scarr aka Big Frozone, aka Big Grim Reaper aka The Secret Weapon. P.S. This just the warm up. I’m in album mode now. 2023 is mine.”

Those words ring bittersweet now. On December 22, the 22 year-old rapper, born Alexander Woods, died of a prescription pain medication overdose. But his words may yet ring true, as the album he mentioned has just been released.

The Secret Weapon was clearly aiming for the stratosphere, continuing the move to bigger sounds signaled by Scarr’s full length debut on the 1017 imprint, 2021’s Big Grim Reaper. That album offered three full versions of a single tune, “SoIcyBoyz,” which, taken in succession, track the changes Big Scarr was undergoing as he ramped up to the big time.

The song’s first version, featuring his cousin Pooh Shiesty and Foogiano, was a masterpiece of hip hop invention, pairing hazy acoustic guitar chords with relaxed rhymes touching on the joys of swigging cough syrup and Fanta in the yard with one’s steady mobbin’ crew of choice. Its sound is a standout in the trap music roster by virtue of its almost folksy ambiance, yet is practically stamped with the phrase “Memphis AF.”

As he noted in a statement after his debut album, “It’s rough out here. What I’m rapping about is what’s going on where I’m from. It’s the slums. It’s the trenches. It’s the hood. It’s tough. It’s real.”

With Version 2 of the song, producer Tay Keith, also from Memphis, was brought on, and the track took on a more percussive atmosphere, while retaining a certain lightness. With Version 3, which added Gucci Mane to the mix, the soundscape seemed to grow even more cinematic, and more in keeping with the horror-film aesthetic of Three 6 Mafia.

Cut to last week, when the The Secret Weapon revealed Big Scarr’s first full album since his debut (not counting 2022’s deluxe mixtape, Big Grim Reaper: The Return). And the soundscape somehow splits the difference between all those versions of “SoIcyBoyz,” invoking cinematic spaces even as the vocals and assorted jangled sounds stay perched on the edge of your ear.

Take track 2, for instance: “Trappin n Rappin (feat. Gucci Mane),” begins with orchestral sounds seemingly run through a broken tape player that nonetheless lend an epic sweep to (Gucci Mane’s?) invocation, “Long live the legend, my secret weapon.” The otherworldly swirl of sound is an effective contrast with Big Scarr’s dry, laconic delivery, surely the most Southern of the diverse dialects in today’s hip hop world.

Yet, in his own gruff way, Big Scarr’s rhymes are mighty nimble as well, as he reveals later in “SKRT SKRT,” the title signifying the song’s hook, sung in falsetto. “That’s what ya hear when I come through …” he sings in between rapid-fire verses that deftly paint a portrait of the neighborhood life.

It turns out such throw-away choruses, thrown out as if afterthoughts, are a specialty of Big Scarr. “Toe Tag (feat. Key Glock)” also features the two title words, evoking the morgue, in a brief quip of a “chorus” that’s over before you know it. The offhand delivery is almost maniacal in it’s casual glee.

Perhaps cutting a track like “I’m Him” was Big Scarr’s subtle shout out to the mega-platinum world of Kevin Gates’ smash album of the same name. In any case, the Memphis rapper is sure-footed in defining a new sound for himself, equal parts cinematic gloom and toy-instrument lightness. Now that Memphis — and the Magnolia community of South Memphis where he grew up — mourns his loss, that sound still stands, and may yet be New 1017’s secret weapon.

(l) courtesy Specialty Archives; (r) by Jean Pierre Leloir

Little Richard & Otis Redding

“When I heard Otis sing ‘Lucille,’ I thought it was me!” That’s just one bombshell that dropped from the mouth of Little Richard many years ago, as he inducted Otis Redding into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. Some such inductions transcend sheer pageantry, and, though there was pageantry in all he did, Little Richard’s tribute to the Big O was one of them.

It’s worth revisiting that moment, now that the rock and roll firebrand, the “architect of rock ‘n’ roll,” the Georgia Peach himself, has left us. Since Richard Penniman’s death on Saturday at age 87, few could have missed the outpouring of both grief and love by a world celebrating his influence on modern music, from the Beatles to Prince. But fewer have noted the supreme influence of the Georgia Peach on another transcendent talent, usually associated with Memphis and Stax Records: Otis Redding.

That it was a deep and abiding influence is clear within the first seconds of Little Richard’s appearance at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. As the band revs up the classic Stax arrangement of “I Can’t Turn You Loose,” he steps up to the podium and starts to sing. And it’s eerie how much of Otis Redding’s unique timbre and delivery is captured by his elder and inspiration, Little Richard, almost fifty years after Redding’s own death. In that instant, you can hear the Richard in the Redding and the Redding in the Richard.

Little Richard & Otis Redding: The Unsung Bond of Their Macon Roots

As he dips into other hits from Redding’s repertoire, Little Richard’s evocation of Redding’s voice becomes more uncanny. Though the groove and feel of the Stax hits were very different from Little Richard’s, and Otis never directly copied Richard’s trademark “Wooooo!” (as the young Paul McCartney did), there is a deep resonance common to the delivery of both performers. And suddenly you can sense how powerful it must have been to be young and Black in 1950s Macon, Georgia, hearing and seeing a hometown hero ascend to immortality.
Courtesy Specialty Archives

Little Richard

“I can remember when Otis quit school he went out on the road with Little Richard’s old band, the Upsetters,” remembers his brother Rodgers Redding in Peter Guralnick’s Sweet Soul Music. “And he would send home $25 a week. That was a lot of money in those days…I remember Otis saying, ‘One of these days I’m going to be like them.’ He was just determined, there was nothing that could have stopped him.”

Little Richard & Otis Redding: The Unsung Bond of Their Macon Roots (2)

Indeed, it was when singing Little Richard’s “Heebie Jeebies” that the young Otis Redding tasted success for the first time. “That song really inspired me to start singing,” Otis told writer Stanley Booth. “I won the talent show for 15 straight nights with that song, and then they wouldn’t let me sing no more, wouldn’t let me win that five dollars any more.”

Before long, Otis Redding was singing in guitarist Johnny Jenkins’ group, the Pinetoppers. When they had a regional hit with “Love Twist,” Joe Galkin of Atlantic Records took notice, and sent them to Memphis to cut some more sides in the Stax Records studio. Galkin, claimed a third of all of Otis Redding’s publishing royalties from that point on, and in return insisted that Stax’s Jim Stewart record Redding as well as the Pinetoppers that day. He sang “These Arms of Mine” with the Stax house band, and the rest is history.

Little Richard & Otis Redding: The Unsung Bond of Their Macon Roots (3)

Viewing Little Richard’s presentation from 1989, it’s clear that he watched Otis’ ascension with wonder and delight (and perhaps some envy?). As he sings one Otis hit after another, his internalization of the man’s phrasing is remarkable. It’s telling that, before that moment, Little Richard had not indulged in such music for decades. But when it was for Otis, he fired up the engines once more.

After the first number at the podium, Little Richard steps back to say, “I haven’t done that in 30 years! Ooh my God, I felt good doing that. You all gonna make me scream like a white lady!”

More songs follow. Richard doesn’t know all the words to “The Happy Song (Dum Dum),” but continues with fervor, undaunted, before noting, “Otis Redding was born in Macon, Georgia. His father was a preacher, and Otis Redding was a preacher,” seeming to know that we won’t take his words literally, knowing that we know Otis was a preacher in the church of soul.

When Richard invites Redding’s wife, Zelma, up, the affection and protectiveness he feels for her is palpable. He won’t let her speak until he takes her across the stage and exhorts photographers to “mash your button!” All in all, Little Richard’s moment is less an induction ceremony than a warm embrace of all that Otis Redding meant to us, seemingly repaying the favor of Redding picking up where Richard left off, so many years ago.
Courtesy Stax Museum of American Soul Music

Otis Redding at his ranch near Macon, GA

Want to explore Otis Redding’s music? Start with his first album, Pain In My Heart, released in 1964 on ATCO Records, featuring his version of Lucille as the closing track.

To hear more Little Richard, there’s no better place to start than his debut album from 1957, Here’s Little Richard, recently remastered and reissued by Craft Recordings, complete with a second disc of studio outtakes and demos Richard recorded at home in Macon in 1955.