Buckwheat Zydeco Story: A 20 Year Party

Just in time for summer barbecue season--this compilation was released two days after the Fourth of July--comes the ultimate Buckwheat Zydeco collection. From Stanley "Buckwheat" Dural's own label, Tomorrow Recordings (set up for the January 1999 reissue of the album Trouble), The Buckwheat Zydeco Story, unlike most artists' best-of collections, contains material from several different labels. The previous greatest-hits collection, Menagerie, streamlined the band's somewhat uneven material recorded for Island Records but didn't touch on the much finer earlier recordings made for Rounder and Black Top. The Buckwheat Zydeco Story does, even including the song "Skip to My Blues" from the children's album Choo Choo Boogaloo. There's also Buckwheat's collaboration with Eric Clapton, a tantalizingly upbeat version of "Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad?" And, for completists who probably have all this stuff already anyway, there's an added bonus: a live track from the 1998 Edmonton Folk Festival. This collection's also an excellent introduction to Buckwheat Zydeco's music, and the perfect CD to spin at your next backyard beer-and-barbecue event. --Genevieve Williams