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Here’s a question for you: Who is Wardell Quezergue?

You shouldn’t feel too bad if you don’t know the name – after all, Quezergue is a behind-the-scenes kind of guy, a producer and arranger. And if you don’t recognize his name, maybe his work will ring a bell: “Chapel of Love” (Dixie Cups), “Mr. Big Stuff” (Jean Knight) and “Groove Me” (King Floyd), to name a few. Starting to sound familiar?

“Everybody should know his name, and they don’t,” says Aimee Bussells ’05, who heads a New Orleans–based nonprofit devoted to celebrating and honoring the “unsung heroes of American music.”

But there was a time when Bussells didn’t have a clue who Quezergue was, either. She certainly never learned about him in college or from music teachers growing up. And she’s no musician herself. The closest she ever came to calling herself one was when she was 12 years old. Piano lessons.

“After four months I begged my mom to let me quit,” recalls Bussells. “Now I’m just a professional appreciator, by no means a musician myself. That ship has sailed.”

Quezergue, on the other hand, is one of the greats. One of the people everyone should know by name. Someone you should learn about in school.

That’s the idea behind the Ponderosa Stomp Foundation. It’s Bussells’ job as executive director to make sure the stories of these influential musicians never die. You know, the people like Eddie Floyd, Harvey Scales, Otis Clay and, Bussells’ personal favorite, Wardell Quezergue.

“I like to think of us as curators,” explains Bussells. “We celebrate and spread the word about these great collaborators or musicians who might not get as much recognition as, say, Fatz Domino, but who are just as important and fundamental in shaping American music and American history.”

Whether she’s curating a museum exhibit, creating a curriculum for in-school seminars or putting on a live show – like the annual Ponderosa Stomp, the organization’s longest-running and most popular program – Bussells’ goal is to create for people a more thorough and complete understanding of American music history through these unsung heroes.

Having become enthralled with what she’s learned since coming to New Orleans six months after Hurricane Katrina to help with relief efforts for musicians and other community members, Bussells is perhaps most connected to the education efforts of her organization.

“We’re exposing kids – from second graders to college students – to music they wouldn’t otherwise listen to, and making this trajectory with music. It’s really cool to see these ‘I had no idea!’ or ‘I love that song!’ moments, when people make those personal connections,” says Bussells.

Even more exciting is when she can introduce students to an actual artist – a “primary document,” she calls them. With an average age of 67, these musicians have “lived a lot of life,” she says.

But how did a girl with no musical background and no ties to New Orleans come to be at the helm of a nonprofit organization, championing the cause of educating the public about our country’s lesser-known musical geniuses?

You’ve heard the story before: College student gets halfway through school and realizes she has no clue what direction her life is going. Doesn’t know what she wants to study, what she wants to be. Doesn’t know who she is, really. So she takes a leave of absence, a best friend and a backpack and crosses the Atlantic – not that backpacking through Europe is some crystal ball that will magically reveal the purpose of her existence. But it’s a step closer to self-discovery than trudging along the same muddled path.

“The leave of absence helped me focus,” she recalls. “I realized there’s a lot more world out there and that my major may not be the end-all, be-all of my universe.”

And so, she had a new perspective when she returned from her three-month trek and resumed classes at the College, this time majoring in sociology and minoring in political science. But of course, her major turned out not to be the end-all and be-all of her professional career. If that were the case, she might have majored in music, or even business.

It doesn’t take a special degree to “foster a lifelong love of history, music and art,” says Bussels, adding that it’s that love that she hopes to encourage in others. “I just think it’s important, especially in New Orleans, and especially after the storm. So many things were lost – records and pictures and people themselves. At this point in my life, I think making sure their stories are told and preserved is a wonderful thing to be a part of.”