![]() ![]() Rodney’s mixtapes stream from a grease-cloaked stereo and speakers linked to an iPod that lies safely tucked inside a Styrofoam takeout container. It starts with the music, blasted full volume through the graveyard shift and into the next afternoon. Owner and pitmaster of Scott’s Bar-B-Que, Rodney makes South Carolina barbecue enjoyable again. The state tourism board probably could have simplified their ad campaign, while saving a bit of money in the process and still hitting all those sweet notes of heterogeneity and trend-surfing, by posting images of Rodney Scott, the modern face of not only South Carolina barbecue, not just whole-hog barbecue, but, arguably, an entire nation of barbecue-obsessed citizens. They welcomed eaters to a new era in South Carolina barbecue, encouraged visitors to sit at a table that could be inclusive, peaceful, and fun. The billboards appeared to be reckoning with the man’s legacy, the state’s sad racial history, and the complex state of affairs concerning anything and everything barbecue. ![]() Maurice Bessinger, the grand wizard of South Carolina barbecue, had passed away two months earlier, on February 22, 2014, at the age of eighty-three. All of the billboards encouraged viewers to visit a website that offered a South Carolina BBQ Trail Map, which featured more than two hundred restaurants scattered throughout all three corners of the isosceles-shaped state and incited eaters to "bite into the birthplace of BBQ." Others made feeble attempts at e-coolness: "BBQ You’ll Blog About" and "#SCBBQ." Many of the billboards featured smiling faces-a carefully selected show of racial and generational diversity-gazing adoringly at barbecue sandwiches or a mess of chopped pork. On my most recent visit to Scott’s Bar-B-Que, the South Carolina interstate touted a brand-new breed of billboard advertisements: a slick, tourism-department-sponsored branding of the state’s patchwork barbecue culture. As the next track starts to play, the pitmaster moves on to the next hog. The original drum thump and organ bounce shift back in, and he’s working the flesh with a serving spoon, scooping the tender meat in on itself to let the sauce soak down to the skin. He swabs the pig once, twice, again calls this "spreading the love around." The taste of vinegar shimmies into the air, while the sauce simmers in the hog’s cavity, staining the meat a bright curried orange. Now Rodney grabs a mop and painter’s bucket full of sauce. On cue, the pitmaster reaches for black pepper and a second, unmarked container. "Yeah!" Booker signals another chord progression and Steve Cropper’s guitar solo winds its way through the smoke. He’s dancing around the pit, the pig his partner, as the capsicum ignites, exploding invisible tendrils of spice across the room. The music, the pitmaster are heating up now. In comes the bassist’s caveman stomp-thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-and now he’s bobbing his head while dashing red pepper flakes with his right hand, cayenne from his left. ![]() Arm extended high, shaking grains on down over the charred pigs in rhythm to Al Jackson, Jr.’s hi-hat beat. & the MGs’ swinging-sixties deep-organ hit "Green Onions" as he starts in with the salt. ![]()
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