Buckwheat Zydeco at B. B. King's

For one night, Stanley Joseph Dural, Jr., better known as Buckwheat Zydeco, dislodged B.B. King's from its midtown Manhattan location and implanted Lafayette, Louisiana's El Sid O's Zydeco and Blues Club in its place. By the time Buckwheat and his band launched into "Let the Good Times Roll," early in the set, seats were emptied and the large dance floor was jammed and would remain jammed for the remainder of his ninety-minute performance. Buckwheat led "the world's greatest party band" through favorites like "Hard to Stop," "Walking to New Orleans," and "Ya Ya," as well as a few French Creole zydeco classics.

Born in Lafayette in 1947, Buckwheat was a child prodigy, but on the piano not the accordion. His father, a zydeco accordionist, encouraged his son who played his first professional gig began before he was ten. Zydeco, however, was not young Dural's choice of music. Instead, he preferred rhythm and blues and, in time, he backed major stars, like Joe Tex, Bobby Blue Bland, and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. Watching these stars and playing small clubs and juke joints, Dural learned what an audience wanted: good dance music from a tight band and a star performer with some flash. In 1971, he founded a flamboyant fifteen-piece funk band, the Hitchhikers, which he led for some five years. When Buckwheat took the stage at B.B.'s, his hair was well coifed, his suit and accordion bright white, and his smile huge. The flash is still there.

Dural turned to Zydeco when he accepted a gig on the Hammond B-3 with then reigning king of zydeco Clifton Chenier, a friend of Dural, Sr. In short time, Dural, Jr., was hooked on his roots music. With some accordion tutoring from Chenier, Dural left the band in less than three years. He woodshedded the accordion for another year, emerging as the newly christened Buckwheat Zydeco and formed his own band with a marketer's nightmare of a name, Ils Sont Partis Band, taken from the cry at Lafayette's race track Evangeline Downs - in translation, "They're off!" Buckwheat and Ils Sont Partis Band hit the road and have never really been off. He inherited zydeco's crown on Chenier's passing in 1987.

In the mid 1980s, Buckwheat was poised on the brink of stardom. He became the first zydeco artist to sign to a major label, Island Records. Of course, that and his recording of compositions by Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and Jagger-Richards led to charges of selling out, but Buckwheat was only doing what zydeco performers had always done: merge contemporary pop with traditional sounds. Zydeco is, after all, a hybrid of rhythms (African, Caribbean, jazz, soul, rock, funk, country, etc.) filtered through a southwest Louisiana spirit and consciousness. In fact, it was Chenier who introduced rock and roll into zydeco, stating that he wanted to "mix it up a bit" and "put pep" into the music. But despite endorsements from Clapton (who was first drawn to Buck on the Hammond B-3, not the accordion) and U2's Bono, four Grammy nominations, and exposure in Jim McBride's The Big Easy (1987), film and soundtrack, superstardom has eluded Buck just as mainstream exposure has eluded zydeco. Zydeco has produced only one international hit, "My Toot Toot" (1985), which despite the artistry of Rockin' Sidney, was largely hailed as a novelty song. Featuring the accordion, rubboard, and French Creole lyrics, Zydeco has never been destined for the pop mainstream.

Furthermore, as Buckwheat demonstrates, zydeco thrives on intimacy. Without breaking the rhythm of a song or the momentum of the set, Buck constantly made eye contact with the dancers and sometimes bent down to talk briefly. A powerful force in a club, Buck seemed swallowed by the arena settings in which he found himself when he opened for Clapton some fifteen years ago.

Buckwheat, however, seems content with his somewhat marginal pop culture status. He can get a booking almost anywhere in the world and he clearly enjoys performing, especially, it seems, with his current band, the same he used on his astounding 2005 release Jackpot!, his first studio album in eight years and the long awaited follow-up to Down Home Live! (2001, recorded at El Sid O's). It was therefore not surprising that "I'm Gonna Love You Anyway" and "Jackpot!," both from his recent release, fit seamlessly into Buck's catalogue and formed centerpieces of his set. For those songs, Buck welcomed opening performer Catherine Russell back to the stage to recreate her background vocals on the album and to play a little bit of a second rubboard. Russell had warmed up the crowd admirably for Buck with a half dozen or so standard blues and rhythm-and-blues tunes.

Buckwheat, who kept dancers on the floor throughout the evening at B.B.'s, gives his tight, high-octane band many opportunities to stretch. He has enough leads for two guitarists: Olivier Scoazec and Chenier veteran Paul Sinegal, who warmed up the audience with a sterling tribute to B.B. King with "The Thrill Is Gone." He relies on his one man brass section, Curtis Watson on trumpet and other horns, for added power and variety, and he employs a tight rhythm section of Gerard St. Julien on drums and his son Sir Reginald Master Dural on rubboard, who is a fine keyboardist in his own right. But the anchor of the rhythm section and the band is Lee Allen Zeno, who plays a rock solid and driving five-string bass. <[p> Buckwheat concluded the set with a shortened version of "Hey Joe" before getting behind the keyboards for the first time in the evening for a performance of "Buck's Going to Frenchtown," another original off Jackpot!, which in its funk recalls his days with the Hitchhikers. "Why we can't live together?," the song asks before Buck leads a positive chant of "Peace, Love, and Happiness." It was an uplifting end to an uplifting evening.