Buckwheat Zydeco, American accordionist and bandleader, Died at 68

  Music

Stanley Dural, Jr. was born on November 14, 1947, and died on September 24, 2016.

He was better known by his stage name Buckwheat Zydeco.

He was an American accordionist and zydeco musician.

Zydeco was one of the few zydeco artists to achieve mainstream success.

Buuckwheat music group was formally billed as Buckwheat Zydeco and Ils Sont Partis Band, but they often performed as merely Buckwheat Zydeco.

He became very proficient at the organ, and by the late 1950s he was backing Joe Tex, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown and many others.

During 1971, he founded Buckwheat & the Hitchhikers, a funk band that he led for five years before switching to zydeco.

Atthe time, they were a local sensation and found success with the single, “It’s Hard To Get,” recorded for a local Louisiana-based label.

His very powerful and haunting version of the classic “Cryin’ in the Streets” appears on the benefit album for Hurricane Katrina recovery, Our New Orleans: A Benefit Album for the Gulf Coast.

His recoreded version of Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy’s “When the Levee Breaks” appeared on 2011’s Alligator Records 40th Anniversary Collection; which was originally appeared on the 2009 Buckwheat Zydeco album Lay Your Burden Down.

He died due to lung cancer at Our Lady of Lourdes Regional Medical Center.

Stanley Dural, Jr. passed away at 68 years old.