Jazz Articles

Our daily articles are carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. You can find more articles by searching our website, see what's trending on our popular articles page or read articles ahead of their published dates on our future articles page. Read our daily album reviews.

Album Review

Sean Ardoin and Zydekool: Pullin

by Jim Josselyn
December 1, 2001

To my knowledge, zydeco is a style of music that combines elements of many styles of music such as rhythm and blues, funk, rock, jazz and blues and features the accordion. According to Sean Ardoin on “Zydekool Rollin", it comes from the southwestern part of Louisiana. In Ardoin’s hands it certainly is a boisterous, upbeat, “happy" music, as the music contained here demonstrates. The first three numbers (and as I soon found out, all the numbers) here are entirely interchangeable, ...

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Album Review

Buckwheat Zydeco: Down Home Live

by Alan Jones
June 1, 2001

In the twelve or so years that have lapsed since I listened to a Buckwheat Zydeco record, it is comforting to know that the group is still going strong, and yet no wonder. Convincing evidence to their momentum can be heard in their latest release on Tomorrow Recordings, Down Home Live. Down Home Live, a Thanksgiving performance recorded at El Sid O’s Zydeco & Blues Club in Lafayette, Louisiana, is Buckwheat Zydeco’s first (no kidding) live recording, a concoction of ...

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Album Review

Buckwheat Zydeco: The Buckwheat Zydeco Story: A 20-Year Party

by Ed Kopp
November 1, 1999

This retrospective offers catchy, danceable tunes from one of Louisiana’s most compelling performers. Stanley Dural Jr. (alias Buckwheat Zydeco) ranks as the best-selling zydeco artist of all time. Hard to believe that he once wanted no part of zydeco.Son of an accomplished Creole accordian player, Dural first made his mark in the ‘70s as a piano and organ player in various blues and R&B bands in his hometown of LaFaytette. Nicknamed Buckwheat because of his unruly hair, Dural ...