Stanley "Buckwheat Zydeco" Dural grew up in Lafayette, LA, the capitol of Cajun culture, a bastion of the Creole people. He spent his childhood surrounded by the traditional music birthed west of the Atchafalaya Basin, west of New Orleans. Dural's father would play zydeco music on the accordion for his family every night. Dural was more than familiar with the tradition and history that flowed through the music.
Which is to say he hated it.
"I heard the zydeco music 24/7," Dural recounts. "My father played at the house. Every day. Before he left for work in the morning. When he came home for lunch. At night. And that was enough for me."
Somehow, nearly 40 years later, the boy who shook his head at his father's music has become one of the biggest names in the genre's history. Dural has toured the world, won a Grammy, and performed with a coterie of legendary rock musicians. Now he can only chuckle at the irony of his situation. Dural has been one of the biggest movers in popularizing a form once culturally isolated along the Gulf in Louisiana and East Texas.
No official consensus marks the origins of the term "zydeco," but most experts agree it comes from the Creole French word for "snap beans." When spoken, the Creole phrase "Les haricots ne sony pas salés," a phrase that mournfully denotes a lack of meat to eat with the beans, "les haricots" spells phonetically as "zy-dee-co." The genre broke away from its Cajun predecessor, la-la, by replacing the violin with electric string instruments, and adding modern drum kits and piano-style accordions.
Dural was musically inclined, but he wanted nothing to do with his father's zydeco roots. He threw his support behind the boogie-woogie of Fats Domino, Little Richard's rock 'n' roll, and James Brown's funk. He became a skilled organ player, backing artists such as Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, the renowned Texas blues guitarist. Dural began fronting his own funk band, Buckwheat and The Hitchhikers, taking his stage name from the "Our Gang (Little Rascals)" character he resembled.
Then a fateful invitation came in 1975.
Dural's father was a friend of Clifton Chenier, still revered as the "King of Zydeco." The son knew he had been set up when Chenier offered Dural a slot playing organ with the Red Hot Louisiana Band.
"I said I'd give it a shot, to satisfy my father," he said. "I'm gonna take my organ, put it in the van, drive up to the venue, put it onstage, play, take it off the stage, put it in my van. Then I'd go home and say to my dad 'I played zydeco and I still don't like it.'"
Needless to say, Dural's plans fell through. Dural had spent his youth listening to is father playing a solo accordion, but listening to Chenier weave the instrument into accompanying horns, keys and the traditional frottoir washboard opened Dural's eyes. The uproar of the audience revealed the appeal that he had never recognized at home. Dural remained with Chenier's band for two years before deciding to take up the accordion and start his own zydeco outfit.
Dural's musician buddies were stuck in the same rut he had escaped however. Buckwheat Zydeco, the group Dural was trying to assemble, represented the music of their parents, of the elderly. He managed to throw a band together, but finding a vocalist proved difficult. Dural suffered from a stutter during his youth but he eventually accepted that if Buckwheat was going to feature vocals, he had to sing along with learning the accordion. Undeterred, Buckwheat Zydeco learned some standards. Dural ended up paying the cover for his friends to attend the band's first show, just to get the word out.
They were sold.
Buckwheat Zydeco followed in the path of Chenier and his band, finding willing audiences across Europe. The group excelled particularly in Paris, where fans bought into the French roots of the Creole genre.
By the mid-'80s, American audiences had caught up. A wave of fascination with Cajun culture swept the nation, and the traditional music and food of the region found new levels of attention. Mark DeWitt, the Chair of the Traditional Music program at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, says Dural's popular music influences made him an ideal vessel for bringing zydeco to the masses.
"What drew me in as a fan in the late 1980s, having heard a little zydeco and lot of blues prior, was Buckwheat's blues-drenched approach to the accordion and his thrilling, up-beat arrangements with horns," DeWitt said. "Not exactly a traditional format but musically very satisfying."
Dural described himself bridging the gap that his father couldn't: taking the old style and making the new style sympathize with it. Playing a two-step all night would repel younger fans and performing only boogie wouldn't resonate with traditional listeners. Dural aimed to make a concert for the whole family, blending styles like a Cajun gumbo.
The soundtrack to "The Big Easy," a 1987 film starring Dennis Quaid, was a commercial success for the Island record label, and featured Buckwheat's rendition of Cajun standard "Ma 'Tit Fille" (My Little Girl). The label made the group the first zydeco band to sign with a major imprint, and the resulting album "On A Night Like This" received three Grammy nominations and earned the attention of numerous rock 'n' roll icons. Eric Clapton took the group on tour as an opener in 1988. Paul Simon, Clapton and others invited Dural to record with them. A classic photo shows Dural playing his accordion alongside Neil Young and Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant during an impromptu jam. Dural hasn't accumulated the millions that those musicians have, but he relishes their support.
"That's my reward, you know?" he said. "You get a phone call, and that's a blessing. That lets me know that somebody's listening to what I'm doing. You got to learn something from everybody."
Twenty-five years later, not much has changed for Dural and Buckwheat Zydeco, aside from the Grammy the band won for 2009's "Lay Your Burden Down" (the first win after six nominations) and a short battle with cancer of the lungs and vocal cord earlier in 2013. The group described by The New York Times as "one of the best party bands in America" still knows how to get down. Buckwheat Zydeco kicked off a new tour in Canada in early July, and if cancer can't stop Dural, a few thousand miles on the road isn't going to slow him down either.
"I feed off the audience," he explained. "I don't come to a party by myself, I come to a party with the audience. It don't matter if there's two people or 2,000 people. If you got a smile on your face, it's on."
The good news is he doesn't have to front the money for that audience anymore. They're more than willing to pay their own way.
