Buckwheat Zydeco
| Buckwheat Zydeco | |
|---|---|
Buckwheat Zydeco playing on the main stage at the 2006 Festival International de Louisiane.
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Stanley Joseph Dural, Jr. |
| Also known as | Buckwheat Zydeco |
| Born |
November 14, 1947 Lafayette, Louisiana, U.S. |
| Died | September 24, 2016 (aged 68) Lafayette, Louisiana, U.S. |
| Genres | Zydeco, R&B |
| Instruments | Vocals, accordion |
| Years active | 1971–2016 |
| Labels | Alligator Records, Tomorrow Recordings, Rounder, Island, |
| Website | www.buckwheatzydeco.com |
Stanley Joseph Dural, Jr. (November 14, 1947 – September 24, 2016), better known by his stage name Buckwheat Zydeco, was an American accordionist and zydeco musician. He was one of the few zydeco artists to achieve mainstream success. His music group was formally billed as Buckwheat Zydeco and Ils Sont Partis Band, but they often performed as merely Buckwheat Zydeco.
The New York Times said: “Stanley ‘Buckwheat’ Dural leads one of the best bands in America. A down-home and high-powered celebration, meaty and muscular with a fine-tuned sense of dynamics…propulsive rhythms, incendiary performances.”USA Today called him “a zydeco trailblazer.” Buckwheat Zydeco performed with a large number of famous musicians from Eric Clapton (with whom he also recorded) and U2 to the Boston Pops. The band performed at the closing ceremonies of the 1996 Summer Olympics to a worldwide audience of three billion people. Buckwheat performed for President Clinton twice, celebrating both of his inaugurations. The band appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman, CNN, The Today Show, MTV, NBC News, CBS Morning News, and National Public Radio’s Mountain Stage.
Dural was born in Lafayette, Louisiana as one of 13 children he had six brothers and six sisters. As a 5-years-old boy, he worked on a farm picking cotton. He acquired his nickname as a youth, because, with his braided hair, he looked like the character Buckwheat from Our Gang/The Little Rascals movies. His father, a farmer, was an accomplished amateur traditional Creole accordion player, but young Dural preferred listening to and playing rhythm and blues.
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