Buckwheat Zydeco - On Track 1992

RIP Stanley, you were a giant.

Tom Lounges/beatboss@aol.com
Sep 29, 2016 "American musical legend Stanley “Buckwheat” Dural Jr. -- leader of the musical group Buckwheat Zydeco -- died Sept. 24 of lung cancer at Our Lady of Lourdes Regional Medical Center in Lafayette, Louisiana. He was 68.

The Grammy and Emmy winning artist was a frequent visitor to Chicagoland and performed some memorable shows in Northwest Indiana over the years, the last in 2014 at The Lightning Bug Fest in Valparaiso.

Dural became the ambassador of Louisiana Zydeco music by default.  “I grew up with the music because my father played it, but I was always more drawn to the sound of Rhythm & Blues,” Dural told this writer during the last of our three interviews over the years. Learning to play organ as a child, Buckwheat went off playing gin joints and dance halls all across the South in the late 1950s, backing up Joe Tex, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown and others, before forming his own blues group Buckwheat & The Hitchhikers in 1971.

It wasn’t until after accepting an offer in 1976 to join the band of Clifton Chenier (aka ‘The King of Zydeco’), that Dural came to love Zydeco music after years of resisting it. “My father played accordion at family gatherings but I never liked it (Zydeco) because I just didn’t understand it,” he said. “But after playing with Clifton, who was my father’s best friend, I finally got it! Once I did, Zydeco is all I wanted to play. I love to play it for people, because Zydeco is very happy, upbeat music that makes a person smile, makes them dance and makes them forget their troubles.

By the early 1980s, Buckwheat Zydeco – the band – was born and recorded for such record labels as Blacktop, Rounder and Island, before landing on Chicago’s Alligator Records, where the band won a 2009 Grammy Award for “Lay Your Burden Down.”

Dural said taking that Grammy home was a proud moment as was taking home an Emmy Award for his music in the CBS-TV movie about a Louisiana basketball Hall of Famer in “Pistol Pete: The Life And Times of Pete Maravich.”

Jack Vartoogian/Getty

“Music has given me a wonderful life,” he said. When asked to recall some career highlights, Dural said -- “It was an honor to be asked to play for President Clinton at both of his inaugurals,” and he quickly added how touring North American with Eric Clapton in 1988 was another very special memory. Buckwheat Zydeco was also Clapton’s special guest for a 12-night stand that year at Royal Albert Hall.

“If I had to pick just one though, it was performing in front of three billion people during the closing ceremonies of the 1996 Summer Olympics. That was really something,” Dural said. “Whether I’m in front of 3 billion or 300 people, I always play my best. It’s who I am and it’s what I do.”

That commitment to excellence is what made Stanley “Buckwheat” Dural Jr. so memorable and a consummate performer and showman. Dural was truly one of the best."
Tom Lounges/beatboss@aol.com
Sep 29, 2016