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Buckwheat Zydeco, RIP

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By Erik Loomis

On September 24, 2016

At 11:01 am

In General

755 Views

Another great musician is gone.

deaths, music, zydeco

UkuleleIke

I saw him back in 88. Great show.
Jay B

Goddamit! But oh my, God was he fun. I had the immense pleasure seeing him at the old Rock and Bowl (pre-renovation at least) probably 25 years ago. It always made me wish I knew how to waltz. RIP, Mr. Zydeco.
twbb

That’s a shame; I saw him when I was a kid (must have been mid-1980’s), and he was a lot of fun to watch.
Origami Isopod

Fuck.
Jhoosier

My musical knowledge is so limited. It really sucks that it only gets broadened with people die.
paulgottlieb

One of the great cross-cultural moments in television history was when the late, great French-American Chef Pierre Franey visited Buckwheat in Louisiana on his “Cooking in America” TV Series. It was very enjoyable seeing two people from such different backgrounds bonding over the love for cooking
- howard
  
  wow, does that sound great: i’m going to set out to find it on youtube.
  
  i love how much love louisiana musicians have for louisiana cooking: you hear about it all the time.
  - howard
    
    on a quick check, it doesn’t appear to be available, but i gather that zydeco wrote the theme for the show: if you can point me at a link, that would be great.
DrDick

Damn! They are dropping like flies this year.
- Ahenobarbus
  
  I suspect their dropping at the same rate they always do, but we’re now old enough to have been fans of them.
  - Kurzleg
    
    Ain’t it the truth? Just the other day the film director Curtis Hanson left as at age 71. Edward Albee as well. I knew less about Albee, but the film version of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff?” has always been a favorite, so losing the one who conceived the play is saddening.
    
    This whole phenomena of seeing entertainers I admire pass away has caught me off guard a bit. I guess it never occurred to me that once I reached a certain age I’d be confronted with this stark reality.
    
    ETA: I see that Mr. Dural was only 68. Man, that’s sad.
  - twbb
    
    Yeah I think this is it. I’m always a little surprised by the constant outpourings of shock that the otherwise (mostly) rational LGM commentariat have over the deaths of people in their late 70’s through 90’s,* and the insistence that it is somehow an unusually “bad year.”
    
    * Zydeco was fairly young, I know, just making a general observation.
    - cpinva
      
      well, as Kurzleg noted, we are getting to the age where those people who entertained us as children/teenagers/young adults are themselves hitting the ages where they tend to die. same thing with the obits in the local papers, we look at them, and people we know are listed. depressing, but a fact o’ life.
Davis X. Machina

My kids’ favorite tape when they were small was their “Choo Choo Boogaloo”, esp. their cover? of the Meters’ ‘They All Asked for You.”

When Katrina came, they were constantly checking for news about their friends at the Audubon Zoo.
- q-tip
  
  Thanks for the link and adorable story! Sounds like the monkey, zebra, and elephant did okay:
  
  The only fatalities so far were two otters and a raccoon, zoo curator Dan Maloney said Sunday.
Mac the Knife

I got turned on to a ton of good stuff through Buckwheat Zydeco – Boozoo Chavis, Beau Jocque, Clifton Chenier, Zydeco Force, the Ardoin family, the list goes on…

But even though he’s by far the most famous person who did that kind of music, his stuff held up every time I came back to him after a deeper dive.

I met him briefly once, and he was a sweetheart. I’m pretty sure he stayed on the road as long as he could hold up. He could sing, play, had catchy songs, and was an old-school showband leader par excellence. RIP Mr Dural.
Kurzleg

Somewhere I have a Buckwheat Zydeco cassette laying around. Haven’t listen to it in years – heck, haven’t listened to any zydeco in years – but really loved it when I first heard it in college. (That’s the great thing about college: you meet people from all over and get exposed to all sorts of music as a result.)
- cpinva
  
  “(That’s the great thing about college: you meet people from all over and get exposed to all sorts of music as a result.)”
  
  this too. with luck, you also get exposed to different ways of seeing things, not just from your classes, but from all the people from all over the country and other parts of the world.
Brutusettu

I feel this isn’t a good place for me, considering the ads I’m getting here.

Not because they are 소녀시대 aka Sonyeo Shidae aka SNSD aka Girls’ Generation ads, but because I recognize who they were based on a screenshot with no text.