Forget the 1950s diner and the jukebox. This deep dive argues the blueprint of rock and roll was laid down in 1929 by a nearly blind teenage guitarist in the Jim Crow South. Lemoyne Roosevelt Graves, born December 9, 1909 in Rose Hill or Summerland, Mississippi, and his younger brother Uaroy, born around 1912, were both nearly blind, and in a rural economy built on field labor, music was one of the only paths away from destitution. Roosevelt sang and played guitar while Uaroy hammered a tambourine with a snare-like backbeat, and together they moved freely between reverent gospel and raucous juke joint blues.

The episode examines their 1929 Paramount session, credited to Blind Roosevelt Graves and Brother, which produced the gospel standout I’ll Be Rested, the earliest known recording of Guitar Boogie, and Crazy About My Baby, a track one prominent blues historian argues is the first rock and roll record. It then follows talent broker H.C. Speir to a July 1936 session in a makeshift studio inside the Hotel Hattiesburg, where pianist Cooney Vaughn joined the brothers as the Mississippi Jook Band to cut Barbecue Bust, Hittin’ the Bottle Stomp, Dangerous Woman, and Skippy Whippy, tracks that rock histories describe as fully formed. The brothers never recorded again. Roosevelt died of a heart attack in Gulfport on December 30, 1962 and was buried in an unmarked grave, while historians renamed Uaroy as Aaron or Leroy until 2004, when scanned Paramount files proved his name was written clearly all along. A Mississippi Blues Trail marker was erected in Hattiesburg in October 2008.

• Why the industry’s race records and gospel categories could not contain the Graves brothers
• What a backbeat is and how a tambourine mimicked a modern snare drum
• How adding piano gave the trio the bass frequencies of a rock band blueprint
• Why a DIY hotel room studio in sweltering July captured lightning in a bottle
• How internet sleuths restored Uaroy Graves’ real name after 70 years of scholarly correction