Change background of ul when rollover li a

I am working with sprites and I have a background image where I have a my menu items all in line and then underneath a description so when you rollover the menu item you will not only see the item change but the text will appear below. (basic sprites stuff and easy to do.)

What I am struggling with it the text below is often alot lager than one button more like two or 3 which prover a problem when it’s the background of the <li> I am changing.

So I was wondering if there was a way I could rollover <li> and then have the background of <ul> change instead of <li> as it is now. This would allow me to have the text as long as I want.

I’ve been looking at jQuery but I haven’t seen a working solution yet.