Mississippi's Rolling Stone Rock History

The earliest version of The Rolling Stones

Mississippi is well known as the blues capital of the world. And of course it’s the home of Elvis Presley, the king of rock and roll. But as MPB arts reporter Ron Brown tells us, Mississsippi’s rock and roll history is much more varied than just Elvis. And it begins with a band called The Rolling Stones.

In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s rock and roll was in its infancy. And for Mississippi rock and roll bands like The Vels, all things seemed possible. Rock and Roll was taking off in Memphis at the famed Sun Studio, but they were also making rock and roll records in Jackson. Records like “Mysterious Teenager,” and “Please be Mine.”

One of the earliest of the early rock and roll fans was a kid named Johnny Sumrall Junior. Who not only became an avid fan of Mississippi rock bands, but also a collector.

“So my daddy said if I was gonna start buying all this rock and roll music, then I had better found me a job to start paying for it. So he suggested that I get a paper route. So I started throwing papers and that’s where my money went to… buying these 45 records that were out”

Of all the rock bands calling Mississippi home at the time, Johnny’s favorite band was fronted by a young Misssissippi State University student with a guitar and a pompadour named Andy Anderson.

“We played some rockabilly stuff and early Hank Snow, which had rhythm as you know, and it had a lot about rhythm, then we added a drummer, and keyboard player and lead guitar, electric bass. We tried to play as driving a style as we could. When I say driving I mean powerful.”

According to Johnny Sumrall, Andy had the hottest band in the state and everyone knew it, including the other local rock and roll bands who flocked to his shows.

“They would all come down there and Andy would drop a guitar pick and they’d all be scrambling… to pick up Andy’s guitar pick.. and they were patterning themselves a lot after Andy’s band. It was a five piece band and they would just really get down and play rock and roll… Like it should be played.”

Andy’s hard driving rock and roll band had a hard driving rock and roll name as well…

“We called ourselves The Rolling Stones… laughs… because we gathered no moss, and that’s how that name came up…

Andy Anderson and the Rolling Stones played college fraternity parties, high school proms, college graduation parties and local VFWs in the late 1950s. But then the Rolling Stones recorded for Rock and Roll pioneer Sam Phillips at Sun Records, then went into a Nashville recording studio and they were on a roll.

“Then when we put the record out, it got in the charts almost immediately and once you get a record in the charts your live changes.”

The first Rolling Stones record was Johnny Valentine.

Johnny Valentine did well for Anderson and Rolling Stones, and soon they were playing the famed Louisiana Hay Ride show with another up and comer with Mississippi roots. It’s the first and only time the Rolling Stones have ever been on the same bill with Elvis Presley.

But at the end of the weekend, the Rolling Stones went back to school at Mississippi State University.

“We were all college students. Our job was eight to five was to go to school. And somewhere in between, we had to cram the music in there. And that’s what we did.”

Andy and the Rolling Stones learned a lot in college, but what they did not learn, was the importance of copyrighting the name of the band. Mississippi’s early rock and roll past has been preserved by Johnny Sumrall in a book called classic Magnolia Rock. He says he did it to remind music fans that Mississippi has another great musical heritage to brag about .

“To let people realize that the rock and roll that’s come out of Mississippi cause they know about the country and the blues, but they don’t realize about all the rock and roll that came out of Mississippi.”

Rock and Roll like the Vells, Cliff Thomas, Al Ward, and even the Rolling Stones. For MPB News, I’m Ron Brown.