Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” hits No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100 - September 19th, 1960

On this day in 1960, Chubby Checker’s rendition of “The Twist” reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in history class is a production of I
heart radio. Hello and welcome to this day in history class,
a show that belts out the greatest hits of history
one day at a time. I'm Gay Bluesier, and today
we're looking at the story behind the twist, the iconic
pop song that turned an eighteen year old former chicken

(00:22):
plucker into an international superstar. The day was September sixty.
Chubby checkers rendition of the twist reached number one on
the billboard hot one hundred singles chart. Recorded when the

(00:45):
singer was still in high school, the twist went on
to become one of the great pop anthems of the decade.
It lost its top spot on the chart after only
a week, but that was long enough to spark what's
now considered to be the first worldwide day it's craze.
From Canada to Brazil, from New Zealand to South Africa,
it seemed like just about everyone on the planet had

(01:07):
accepted Checker's cheery invitation to come on and twist. Let's
see if the song has the same effect on you.

(01:30):
And although Chubby checker made it famous, the twist was
originally written as a twelve Bar Blues Song by R
and B musician Hank Ballard. He had gotten the idea
for it by watching the way people danced at his concerts,
both on stage and in the crowd. They made a
twisting motion with their hips and legs that he described as, quote,

(01:54):
trying to put a cigarette out. He decided to write
a song to go with the dance and in nine
he and his band the midnighters, released it as the
B side of one of their singles. In case you've
never heard the original version before, here's a taste. I'm

(02:32):
you probably noticed the two versions of the song sound
an awful lot alike. We'll talk a little more about
that a bit later. Hank Ballard and the midnighters tried
to launch a twist craze of their own by playing
the song and doing the dance it shows across the country. However,
it only ever caught on in the inner cities of
Philadelphia and Baltimore, and while the song did work its

(02:56):
way onto the national singles chart, it never got anywhere
near the spot. Ballard's song wasn't the breakout hit he'd
hoped for, but it left a strong enough impression on
Baltimore Dj Buddy Dean that he recommended the song to
his colleague Dick Clark. At the time, Clark hosted a
popular music and dance show in Philadelphia called American bandstand.

(03:19):
The show it aired locally since nineteen fifty two, but
was picked up for national broadcast by ABC starting in
Nineteen fifty seven. When Dick Clark heard the twist, he
knew it would be perfect for the show, but he
didn't like the idea of bringing Ballard on to perform it.
The singer was mostly known for suggestive tunes like sexy

(03:39):
ways and the Hoochie Coochie coop. Clark didn't want that
kind of Innuendo associated with his wholesome American talent show,
so he decided to find someone with a cleaner image
to sing the twist instead. One of the singers who
showed up to the audition was Philadelphia Teenager Ernest Evans,
a k a Chubby checker. He had been born in

(04:00):
South Carolina but grew up in the projects of Philadelphia,
not far from where American bandstand was filmed. Evans discovered
his passion for music while attending Church as a child
and when he was older he sang harmony on street
corners with a vocal group called the Quantrell's music didn't
pay the bills, though at least not yet. So. Evans

(04:21):
also worked as a chicken plucker at a local poultry market.
He often sang while on the job, and he reportedly
kept his co workers in stitches by impersonating popular singers
of the day such as fats domino, Elvis, Presley and
the coasters. In fact, before he was tapped to cover
the twist, Evans had a minor hit with his first

(04:42):
song release, a showcase of his impersonations called the class.
Take a listen, Little Brown, less your round. You Ain't unbudding.
Little last the class charted in the top forty when

(05:16):
it was released in nineteen fifty nine, but Evans had
a tough time matching that first brush with success. It
was only the briefest of slumps, though, as his audition
for Dick Clark proved to be the big break he'd
been dreaming of. Clark knew that Evans had a knack
for replicating the sound of other artists, and that made
him a natural choice to sing the twist on American bandstand.

(05:38):
But before the show even aired, Clark also arranged for
Evans to record his own version of the track with
a Philly record label called Cameo Parkway. The results were
strikingly similar to Hank Ballard's original. The studio musicians played
the song in the same key in Tempo, and Evans
vocals were a near perfect match. It was such a

(06:00):
faithful cover that when Hank Ballard later heard the song
on the radio, he thought it actually was him. Luckily
there doesn't appear to be any bad blood between the musicians,
probably because, as the songwriter, Ballard was entitled to some
hefty royalties if and when the new version of the
twist took off, which it did. Ernest Evans released his

(06:22):
cover of the song in June of nineteen sixty, but
it wasn't his real name on the album cover. By
then the singer had adopted his now famous stage name
Chubby Checker, although he was reportedly nicknamed Chubby as a child.
It was actually Dick Clark's first wife, Barbara Mallory, who
suggested he take the name Chubby Checker. She came up

(06:43):
with the moniker as a parody of the name fats domino,
whom she thought Evans resembled. In July of Nineteen Sixty
checker performed the twist for the first time in front
of a live audience at the Rainbow Club in Wildwood,
New Jersey. Then, just a few weeks later, a big
day finally arrived. On the Saturday evening of August, six

(07:04):
sixty checker performed the song on Dick Clark's American bandstand.
The public ate it up and in the weeks that followed,
checker's version of the twist steadily climbed the singles chart.
The country was so enamored with the song and its
accompanying dance that the original version by Hank Ballard and
the midnight ers also began to climb the charts. On September,

(07:27):
checker's version hit number one, and that same week Ballard's
reached its peak position at number twenty eight. At first,
the twist only managed to hold the top spot for
a single week, but the dance that helped popularize kept
the song on People's minds, radios and record players for
the rest of the year. Part of the reason that
dance became so popular was that almost anyone could do it.

(07:51):
No matter how old someone was or whether they had
rhythm or not, they could probably handle twisting their feet
like they were putting out a cigarette, although, to be fair,
checker's version of the dance was slightly more complicated than
the original. As he explained it, quote, it's like putting
out a cigarette with both feet and coming out of
a shower and wiping your bottom with a towel to

(08:13):
the beat. Not only was the twist intuitive and easy,
it was also novel as one of the first mainstream
dances that didn't involve a partner. This style of dancing,
apart to the beat, as Checker described, it, didn't require
participants to touch each other, a concept that later reached
its zenith during the disco era. Chubby checker knew a

(08:35):
good thing when he saw it, so in x one
he released a kind of sequel song called let's twist again.
Here's a clip. Yeah, you might imagine that such a

(09:07):
derivative cash grab would crash and burn on arrival, but
that's not what happened. The single actually became one of
the biggest hits of the year, reaching number eight on
the US billboard pop chart and number two on the
UK Chart. Let's twist again even won the Grammy Award
for that year's best rock and roll recording. Far from

(09:27):
killing the momentum, the song kept people twisting all the
way into nineteen sixty two. By that point, the twist
had become a full blown phenomenon. There were entire clubs
that only played songs you could twist to, like the
peppermint lounge in New York City. In celebrities like Ja
Jagobor and Rudolph Nurayev had been photographed doing the dance

(09:49):
themselves in public. This publicity, coupled with checkers follow up song,
helped achieve something that had never been done before. On
January teen sixty two, checkers version of the twist returned
to the number one spot on the billboard hot one hundred.
It was the first time a song had reached number
one twice with the same recording by the same artist.

(10:13):
For its second run, the song held the top spot
for two weeks, twice as long as when it peaked
in nineteen sixty once again, Chubby checker new to twist.
While the twisting was good. In nineteen sixty two he
completed his song trilogy with the release of slow twisting,
and he even appeared as himself in two twist centric movies.

(10:35):
Twist around the clock and its sequel. Don't knock the twist.
By nineteen sixty three, checker was ready to give the
twist to rest and try his hand at launching other
dance crazes. He had decent success with hits like the
mess around, the huckle buck and the fly, but none
of those ever quite caught on like the twist. It

(10:56):
took more than two decades, but checker eventually twisted his
way back into the top twenty. That year he teamed
up with the comedic rap group the fat boys to
release a hip hop version of his signature song. That version,
called the twist. Yo Twist, reached number sixteen in the
US and went all the way to number two in

(11:17):
the UK. And, because I know you're curious, here's the
sample and do less. More than sixty years after its

(11:44):
original release, it's hard to take the full measure of
the twist impact on popular music and culture. The song
inspired countless imitations, spinoffs and cover versions and has turned
up again and again in movies and TV shows. It's
received plenty of accolades as well. CHECKER's version was added
to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry in and

(12:08):
was later inducted into both the rock and Roll Hall
of fame and the Grammy Hall of fame. It was
also named by billboard as the biggest hit song of
all time twice. Chubby checker was never shy about capitalizing
on the success of his biggest hit song, and that
remains true to this day. As of two the singer,

(12:29):
now in his eighties, is still touring and still performing
the twist. So here's the Chubby Checker, one of the
last Black Pioneers of rock and roll, who's still out
there sharing his music with the world and giving people
a reason to twist all nine. I'm Dave Bluesier and
hopefully you now know a little more about history today

(12:52):
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(13:12):
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