“I was in the ORIGINAL Rolling Stones.” Coming from an Orange Beach retiree, it sounds like the setup to a joke. But Cuz Covington, whose given name is William, is not kidding. Years before Mick Jagger and Keith Richards formed their band in London, Covington was the flamboyant bass player in a Mississippi rock ’n’ roll group called the Rolling Stones, a regional sensation that recorded at Sun Studio, cut a record that sold hundreds of thousands of copies and shared stages with some of the biggest names of early rock and country.
Covington and his wife, Debbi, have made the Orange Beach area their home base since around 2020, and he is happy to share his stories, backed up with photos, recordings and yellowed newspaper clippings, with anyone who has the time to listen. It makes for one heck of a conversation starter, and more than a few puzzled looks.
A Bass Player With a Show
In the late 1950s, Covington and four bandmates, all students at Mississippi State, were tearing up concert stages around the Southeast. Covington was the group’s lively bassist, and he played a big, custom-painted upright bass with plenty of showmanship. He would stand on the side of the instrument, give it a spin and even play it behind his head.
That kind of stagecraft was part of the excitement of early rock ’n’ roll. Before electric bass guitars became standard, the upright “slap” bass drove the rhythm of rockabilly, and bassists like Bill Black, who played with Elvis Presley, became known for their energetic antics on stage.
How the Band Got Its Name
It is well known that the British Rolling Stones took their name from a Muddy Waters song. Covington’s band had a more unusual, and more local, inspiration.
“Our guitar player, ‘Little Joe’ Tubb, came up with that,” Covington says. “Some guys he knew had robbed a bank in Canton, Miss., and afterward they said, ‘We’re nothing but a bunch of Rolling Stones.’ They were students at Hinds Junior College and probably got drunk one night and decided to go rob a bank. They did go to prison for it.”
From Meridian to the Old Main Dormitory
Covington grew up in Meridian, Mississippi, a city with deep musical roots as the hometown of Jimmie Rodgers, often called the Father of Country Music. As a teenager, Covington started playing at informal get-togethers in town, some of them hosted by a woman who was a songwriter and a cousin of Rodgers.
At Mississippi State, he found four fellow fledgling musicians: guitarist “Little Joe” Tubb, singer “Andy” Anderson, pianist Roy Estes and drummer Bobby Lyons.
“We all met at Mississippi State and started jamming together in a room at the Old Main dormitory,” he says. “It wasn’t just rock ’n’ roll. We also played some country and some crooning music. Our first gig was a street dance on the campus of Mississippi State College for Women, in Columbus, Miss.” That school is known today as Mississippi University for Women.
Sun Studio, Nashville and “Johnny Valentine”
Before long, the band recorded at Sun Studio in Memphis, the small studio run by Sam Phillips where Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and others helped invent rock ’n’ roll in the 1950s.
Their breakthrough came later at Owen Bradley’s famous studio in Nashville, where Bradley, one of the architects of the polished “Nashville Sound,” produced many country and pop hits. There the band recorded a song called “Johnny Valentine.” The tune is mostly forgotten now, but it caused a stir at the time. According to Covington, it sold around a half-million copies, most of them in England. The single also featured harmonies by the Jordanaires, the vocal quartet famous for singing backup on many of Elvis Presley’s classic recordings.
Back home in Jackson, the band members were treated as rock stars.
“Our record came out in January of ’58,” Covington remembers. “They had a parade down Capitol Street and the whole town turned out for it. I don’t think Elvis would have drawn a bigger crowd at that time. It was a big thing — it was the world premiere of our record.”
Sharing Stages With Legends
Covington never met Elvis Presley, though they were close in age and moved in some of the same circles early on. He did get to know the rest of Elvis’ band, because Covington’s Rolling Stones opened for them when they were performing as the Scotty Moore Trio. For one show, he even let Bill Black borrow his bass and amplifier.
He also recalls sharing the bill with high-profile artists including Carl Perkins, Brenda Lee, Johnny Horton and Ferlin Husky.
“We started playing all around Mississippi at first, and then we started playing all around everywhere,” he says. “We played a lot in Jackson at the Legion Hut, and we played at the University of Alabama probably twice a month. We played some in Biloxi, too, but not a lot, and when the record came out we toured up north, doing shows in places like Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, and Minnesota.”
When the Other Rolling Stones Came Along
The band’s heyday lasted about five years. Around the time that run was winding down, a group of young musicians in London adopted the same name and went on to become one of the most famous bands in the world. Covington says his group took it in stride.
“We just kind of rolled with it,” he says. “We were happy for them.”
The story is not unusual in music history. Before the era of national trademark battles over band names, it was common for regional groups in different parts of the country, or different countries, to share a name without ever crossing paths. Many of those early regional acts built enthusiastic local followings and recorded singles that are now prized by collectors of rockabilly and early rock ’n’ roll.
A Hall of Fame Honor and a Home on the Gulf
Through various careers and several moves around Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama, Covington kept playing music on the side until around 2020. That was also about when he and Debbi moved from Mobile to the Romar Beach area of Orange Beach, where they enjoy sweeping Gulf views from their high-rise condominium.
A crowning moment came around 2012, about a dozen years before he shared these memories in 2024, when the original Rolling Stones were welcomed into the Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame. The band reunited to perform that night and had a blast.
“I’ve always been real pleased with what we accomplished, starting with nothing and not having too many big promoters pushing us,” he says. “We did it on our own. I’m happy with how far it went, especially with us having hardly any musical background when we first got together.”
So if you meet a friendly gentleman along the Alabama coast who mentions that he played in the Rolling Stones, take a moment to listen. The story is true, and it is a remarkable window into the earliest days of rock ’n’ roll in the Deep South.