Buckwheat Zydeco
b. Stanley Dural, 1947, Lafayette, Louisiana, USA. Dural started his musical career playing piano and organ in local bands around southeast Louisiana. As Buckwheat Zydeco emerged as one of the leaders of zydeco music, the accordion-led dance music of southern Louisiana's French-speaking Creoles, in the late '80s and early '90s. Dural, taking the nickname ‘Buckwheat’, worked with R&B singers Joe Tex, Barbara Lynn and Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown during the '60s. Following a period playing keyboards in Clifton Chenier's band, he took up accordion and moved to the indigenous sound of zydeco. He formed his own funk band, the Hitchhikers, in the '70s, followed by the Ils Sont Partis Band in 1979. That outfit recorded eight albums for Blues Unlimited, Black Top and Rounder Records before accordionist Dural formed Buckwheat Zydeco. Signed to Island Records in 1987, the group had recorded three albums for the label by 1990, the latter produced by David Hidalgo of Los Lobos.