At the closing ceremony of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, with roughly three billion people watching, Stanley Dural Jr. stood at the center of the broadcast strapped to a 30-pound piano accordion playing Louisiana Creole dance music. This episode traces how Buckwheat Zydeco got there, starting in Lafayette in 1947 as one of 13 children picking cotton at age five, ignoring his father's traditional Creole accordion, and instead becoming a skilled R&B organist who backed Little Richard, Fats Domino, Ray Charles and Joe Tex before leading his own funk band, Buckwheat and the Hitchhikers, in 1971.

The turning point came in 1976 when Clifton Chenier hired him as organist for the Red Hot Louisiana Band, and a four-hour gig revealed the crowd-moving power of zydeco. After a year of isolated practice on the accordion, he launched his own group in 19 ...