Rock and roll had deep roots in Mississippi blues, and Hattiesburg played an important early role through a historic series of recording sessions in July 1936. The Mississippi Jook Band, made up of brothers Roosevelt and Uaroy Graves and pianist Cooney Vaughan, recorded there nearly two decades before rock and roll surged in the 1950s, and later writers pointed to their records as containing fully formed rock and roll guitar riffs and a stomping beat. Those Hattiesburg sessions, arranged by Jackson talent scout H. C. Speir and recording director W. R. Calaway in a temporary studio at the Hotel Hattiesburg, also included blues, gospel, and country performers such as the Edgewater Crows, the Gold Star Quartette, Rev. R. H. Taylor, the Laurel Firemen's Quartette, the Steelman Sisters, the Madden Community Band, Sunny Spencer and Boy Pugh, Zeke Bingham and Monroe Chapman, Johnson and Lee, Rajah Evans, Benjamin Scott, and Shep and Cooney. Most of the recordings were never released, and the metal master discs were later scrapped or given to the World War II recycling effort, leaving only three issued 78 rpm blues records from the sessions, one by the Edgewater Crows and two by the Mississippi Jook Band. Among the lost recordings was the Edgewater Crows' “Mobile Street Stomp,” honoring the historic African American business and entertainment district where many of the musicians lived and worked; in later years several blues and gospel labels were headquartered on or near Mobile Street. Critics later cited the Mississippi Jook Band's “Barbecue Bust” and “Dangerous Woman” as early examples of rock's emerging sound, and historian Gayle Dean Wardlow later suggested that the Graves brothers' 1929 recording “Crazy About My Baby” could be considered the first rock 'n' roll recording. Roosevelt Graves, who was blind and was born in Summerland near Laurel, traveled with his brother around Mississippi playing street corners and churches; they appeared in Tunica in the 1930 census, were brought from McComb to record in Hattiesburg, and Roosevelt spent his final years in Gulfport. Cooney Vaughn, who also recorded with Shep and Cooney, was reputed by some to be the best pianist in Mississippi at a time when Hattiesburg was known as a hot spot for piano players, alongside musicians such as Little Brother Montgomery and Gus Perryman, and Vaughn was also a cousin of Blind John Davis, who later became one of Chicago's most prolific blues session pianists and toured Europe regularly.