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Teacher's master work was sharing her love of music
Photo by Regan Hill
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, former music teacher Mercedes Tucker Stamps made Statesville her home.
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Published: July 2, 2009
Mercedes Tucker Stamps sits at the bench of the old, nondescript, second- or third-hand upright in the living room of her South Green Street house.
Though she's 83 years old, her hands still move across the keys gracefully, in a dozen directions at once, as she teases a nearly flawless and seemingly impossible rendition of "How Great Thou Art" from the old piano.
"It's out of tune," Stamps says as the last hint of a sound leaves the air. But only the most trained ear or astute listener could make such a discerning statement.
And Stamps is that person.
She taught music, at every grade level of compulsory education, for more than 30 years at 10 different schools in New Orleans.
She and her late husband, Herbert Walker Stamps, moved to Statesville in 2006, when they realized they would not be able to salvage much from their home after it was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
Herbert had grown up in Statesville in the same neighborhood — just south of the downtown area — as the one where they moved.
"This house was owned by the principal of his high school," Stamps said. She was referring to Allan D. Rutherford and the old Morningside High School (the building is now an Iredell-Statesville Schools education center that bears Rutherford's name).
Like the segregated Morningside, about half of Stamps' career was spent teaching in schools that served only African-American students.
And, of course, she attended segregated schools.
Indeed, the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson U.S. Supreme Court case that gave legitimacy to the ill-conceived "separate but equal" doctrine originated in New Orleans, where Stamps was born.
But she was raised in the town of Franklinton, about 75 miles from New Orleans.
In a small book about her life, subtitled "A Public School Teacher's Contribution to New Orleans Music History," Stamps recalls an incident when she was a student that impacted her both musically and socially.
She tells of a time a brand new grand piano was brought to her school. In a time when black students were taught with old and worn out text books, the delivery of the new piano was a shock to the school's students and staff.
But they weren't about to look a gift horse in the mouth and so a music teacher by the name of Gladys Jones Hill gave an impromptu concert.
"Gladys Jones played and she played and she sang," Stamps recalls in the book. She said the event lifted the spirits of everyone at the school.
Until a short time later when the school system learned of its mistake: the piano was meant for the white school, not the black one.
The brand new grand was replaced by a piano that more closely resembled the one in Stamps' living room.
But Stamps love of music — which began, she said, when she was "knee-high to a duck," — was already solidly in place by then.
"I learned it by ear at first," she said. "I would sit down and pick out melodies I heard."
She later studied with a number of teachers and, at the age of just 19, earned her bachelor's degree in music from Southern University.
At her first teaching gig in 1946, she remembered, "Some of the students were older than I was."
One of her younger students that first year at Gilbert Academy was 12-year-old Ellis Marsalis Jr.
"Even when he was young, he was good," Stamps said. "He was almost as good as I was."
Marsalis would go on to become an accomplished jazz musician. But two of his sons, Branford and Wynton, would achieve even greater fame as performers.
Many of Stamps' former students would play influential roles in New Orleans' jazz scene and in other spheres of music. Many more would become music teachers themselves.
Stamps recalled two students, trombonist Freddy Lonzo and saxophonist Earl Turbinton.
She laughed thinking of Lonzo.
"His arms were too short to reach the sixth position on the trombone," she said. "And he would just let it drop and then pick it back up without missing a beat."
She was disappointed in Turbinton, a sax man who played in jazz bands and whom, Stamps said, was "incredibly talented."
She said Turbinton "always talked to kids about staying away from drugs and taking care of themselves and then he got involved in drugs himself."
Turbinton died recently.
As have most of Stamps' old friends from New Orleans. And that's why one of that city's most remembered music teachers is staying in Statesville.
"I really like it here," she said. "This is my home now."
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