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Buckwheat Zydeco (1947-2016), Louisiana – USA by Rob Howard

Video published on Jan 4, 2016. Buckwheat says thanks to all the trick shots featured in the video edited by Jpan Goldsmith. "Put It In the Pocket"

Video: One of the most popular Buckwheat videos, Hey Good Lookin'

Buckwheat Zydeco (Stanley Dural Jr), the accordionist, organist, singer and songwriter, achieved fame as the man who introduced the Zydeco dance music of Louisiana to the world stage. Stanley Dural died on September 24th from lung cancer at Our Lady of Lourdes Regional Medical Center in Lafayette. He was 68. Stanley Dural Jr was born in rural Lafayette, Louisiana, in 1947, one of 13 children. His parents were farmers. He worked on the farm as a boy, spending much time picking cotton, later commenting, “I did a lot of hard stuff coming up. I’m glad I did, 'cause this stuff – making music – is easy.” His father, Stanley Dural Sr., was an amateur accordionist who played traditional Creole songs around the house. In his youth, Buckwheat – the nickname referred to his braided hair, which was reminiscent of the ‘Buckwheat’ character in the old ‘Our Gang’/‘The Little Rascals’ comedy series – rebelled against his father’s music. He took up the accordion, piano, keyboards and the Hammond B3 organ and gravitated toward funk and rhythm & blues, joined bands before forming his own and eventually finding commercial success. His international performances include the 1996 Summer Olympics closing ceremony, which was broadcast to a huge TV audience worldwide, and both of President Bill Clinton’s inauguration celebrations. Dural broke new ground forZydeco, both stylistically and commercially. In 1987, Island Records released Buckwheat Zydeco’s Grammy-nominated ‘On a Night Like This’, the first Zydeco album on a major label. More recently, the world-travelled Dural was the first Zydeco bandleader with his own YouTube channel, ‘Buckwheat’s World’. He was a “cultural ambassador in the truest sense,” said Michael Tisserand, author of the 1998 book ‘The Kingdom of Zydeco’, which will soon be reissued with a new foreword by Dural. “He brought this traditional music to the biggest stage it ever enjoyed. It took someone with his talent, range, sense of showmanship and charisma to take it that far. He’d play songs by Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones, and stretch the music beyond its original shape”, Tisserand said, “but always with the sense of celebration, excitement and cultural pride at the heart of zydeco”.