C'mon On Baby, Let’s Do The Twist!

Steve deep dives into the origins of the song that popularized a controversial dance move, launched multiple social movements and proved to be the starting gun for the rebellious 1960's.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Speed of Sound is a production of I Heart Radio.
In a world where twerking seems almost demure given some
of the moves featured on today's TikTok, it's a bit
difficult to fathom a time and place in which a
dance could be viewed as a moral threat, let alone
one that would ultimately instigate social and political upheaval. But

(00:21):
it happened, and it took the form of a dance
and a song that goes like this. I'm Steve Greenbergain.
On the next couple of episodes of Speed of Sound,

(00:44):
we'll be telling the story of the controversial dance move
that proved to be the starting gun for what we
think of as the Sixties, as we explore the swivel
filled craze known as the twist able Bolo. The world

(01:06):
remembers the twist as a dance that swept America in
the nineteen sixties, but the pelvic motion that forms the
foundation of the twist goes way back two dances that
were originally performed in the Congo and that enslaved Africans
brought with them to America on southern plantations. This particular
dance move became known as ringing and twisting, and during

(01:27):
the nineteenth century it made its way into minstrel shows
under the name grape Vine Twisting. Then in nineteen twelve,
an African American musician named Perry Bradford released a recording
of a song called mess Around, where he instructed listeners
to do this dance where you stand in one spot
nice and tight and twist around and twist around with

(01:49):
all your might. And nearly those exact same instructions showed
up a year later in a song called ball in
the Jack, which became very popular and which was covered
by a whole slew of artists over the next few decades,
time bringing to the left hand, right around, n around

(02:12):
around with all your mind. Now, let's make something very clear.
Right from the start, in the African American community at
that time, the term twist was a double entendre, which
could mean a dance move or it could also be
a euphemism for sex. And in the Great Jelly Roll
Morton recorded a song called Wine and Boy Blues which

(02:35):
really played on that ambiguity out all the doing the double.
Over the years, the twist dance move mutated in the
African American community, and it showed up in dances like

(02:55):
the Lindy Hop, which featured a breakaway section where the
couple dancing separated and did their own moves, very often
including a twisting motion, before coming back together. The breakaway
in Lyndy made it different from dances in the white community,
where traditionally only the feet and the shoulders moved. Of course,

(03:18):
Elvis Presley broke that mold and famously rotated his pelvis
on stage, which was considered very lewd when he performed
the move on the Milton Borough TV Show, leading to
major condemnation by the American press. Popular music has reached
its lowest depths in the grunt and growing antics of
one Elvis Pressley. The TV audience had a noxious sampling

(03:39):
of it on The Milton Burl Show. The other evening, Elvis,
who rotates his pelvis, gave an exhibition that was suggestive
and vulgar, tinged with the kind of animalism that should
be confined to dives and board delos. The Milton Borough
Show performance famously led to Elvis being filmed from the
waist up when he was on The Ed Sullivan Show
in nineteen fifty seven. In the early nineteen fifties, a

(04:07):
man named Joe Joe Wallace, who is a member of
a Philadelphia based gospel group called the Sensational Nightingales, decided
to write a song based on a dance that he
remembered his sister doing when they were little kids back
in Williamston, North Carolina. He and another group member, Bill
Woodruff composed this song called Let's Do the Twist, which

(04:29):
included the lyrics come on, Baby, Let's do the Twist.
But they knew that those lyrics were completely inappropriate for
a gospel group to be associated with, so they decided
to shop it to more mainstream R and B singers,
and in nineteen fifty seven they played it for a
fellow Philadelphia named Joe Cook from the group Little Joe

(04:50):
and the Thrillers. Now these guys were coming off a
big hit song called Peanut. Little Joe and the Thrillers
had also had a hit in the local Philadelphia black
community with a dance record called Let's Do the Slop, which,

(05:13):
like the Twist, was a dance that you danced without touching. Well,
then you slip, then you slop, then you can't slip stops.
Little Joe and the Thrillers were thrilled at the prospect
of recording Let's Do the Twist, but when they played
the demo of the song for their record company, Okay Records,
it was rejected for being too suggestive, especially the background

(05:37):
vocals that went up and down and up and down.
So the sensational Nightingales kept looking for someone to do
the song, and late in nine seven they found themselves
staying in the same hotel in Tampa with a big
R and B singer named Hank Ballard. Now Hank Ballard
was at that time the King of suggestive records, or

(05:59):
as they were more popularly called dirty records. Hank Ballard's
dirty records were massive hits for his label, King Records
in Cincinnati. The first one, in nineteen fifty three, was
a song called get It, so get It, get It,
get It, get It, get it out see hers not Oh.

(06:35):
Hank Ballard recalled his label's reaction to his early hits
in the documentary Twist. The first song I wrote with
a song called get It, get This, get This, get
as you know, I want to see you with it
and you know what we're saying about two on fifty
thousand records. Man, So what happened. The stockholders the King
Records used to come through and fat me on my

(06:55):
back and with a great song. I say write some
a little did it lyrics? You know? So I came over.
The song man ca whip with me an what man

(07:16):
work with me? Was yet another euphemism for have sex
with me? And while the song was really scandalous at
the time, it spent seven weeks at the top of
the R and B chart. It even launched a series
of sequel records, including one called Annie Had a Baby,
which also hit number one. While Hank Ballard was having

(07:44):
one massive R and B hit after another through his
records never appeared on the pop chart at all, and
he most certainly wasn't played on white radio stations. He
was just too dirty. And then suddenly the group hit
a dry spell and none of their record It's hit
on any chart for the next three years. So when
the sensational Nightingales played Let's Do the Twist for Hank

(08:07):
Ballard in that Tampa hotel, he was pretty certain that
King Records was about to drop him as an artist.
Hank figured that recording Let's Do the Twist might be
just what he needed to land a new deal at
another label. He went into his studio in Miami with
a producer named Henry Stone to record a demo of
Let's Do the Twist for VJ Records. Henry Stone, by

(08:28):
the way, is a name that comes up repeatedly whenever
the history of pop music crosses paths with Miami. I've
mentioned him before on Speed of Sound, and he'll definitely
appear again in future episodes. But anyway, Hank Ballard and
his guitar as Cal Green, while they were in the
studio with Henry Stone, decided that while they liked the
basic idea that the Sensational Nightingales had presented for Let's

(08:51):
Do the Twist, the song really needed a different melody
if it was going to be a hit. There are
no existent recordings of the Sensational Nightingales version of the song,
but here's the demo that Hank Ballard cut with Henry Stone. Now,

(09:14):
while that was by all accounts a completely different melody
from the Sensational Nightingales version of the song, it was,
by no stretch of the imagination a new melody. What
Hank Ballard and Cal Green did was they took the
lyrics of Let's Do the Twist by the Nightingales, and
they put them over the melody from one of their
own previous records, is Your Love for Real. But this

(09:46):
story goes even deeper, because the melody of is Your
Love for Real was actually lifted from a hit by
the Drifters called what You're Gonna Do What. The authorship
of that song was credited to Atlantic Records founder Ahmed

(10:08):
Urn again, but he never stepped forward to claim songwriting
credit for the Twist, because it turns out the melody
on the Drifter song was borrowed apart from a gospel
song also called what You're Gonna Do by a group
called the Radio Four. Hank Ballard assumed that the demo
we cut of Let's Do the Twist will get him
a deal with VJ Records, but much to his surprise,

(10:29):
Sid Nathan, the owner of King Records, told him, Hank,
we still believe in you, and they weren't going to
drop him after all. And so in November of Hank
Ballard and the Midnighters found themselves in King Records Cincinnati Studios,
recording a very different version of the song than the
one they did in Miami, and now it was simply

(10:49):
called the Twist That's now. At that session, the group
also recorded this melancholy ballad called tear Drops on Your
Letters side. Hank Ballard believed the twist was going to

(11:19):
be a big hit, but it turns out the producer
of that session at King Records, a man named Henry Glover,
happened to be the writer of Tear Drops on Your Letter,
and he told the Midnighters in no uncertain terms that
tear Drops on Your Letter was going to be the
A side of the single. Years later, Hank Ballard recalled
how he kept begging King Records to flip the forty

(11:40):
over and promote the twist. And I kept telling the man,
I said, the masters on the other side, please turn
that record over. You know it's they did. I couldn't
convince them. History would, of course prove that Hank Ballard's
instincts were correct, But the truth is that Tear Drops
on Your Letter was a pretty big hit. It made
it all the way up to number four on the
R and B chart, and it comp lately revived the

(12:01):
Midnighter's career. Plus, since it wasn't one of those dirty
records Hank was known for, it even managed to show
up on the pop charts in the spring of nine,
which was a first for Hank Ballard. But while tear
Drops on Your Letter was getting all the radio play,
DJs at dances and record hops were turning the record
over and playing the B side. And just as tear

(12:22):
Drops was reaching its peak on the R and B chart,
the Twist suddenly debuted on the chart as well, and
even though it wasn't the side that was being promoted
by the label, it made it all the way to
number sixteen, and even after it dropped off the chart
at the end of June, the Twist kept on being
played at dances and parties and on jukeboxes in African

(12:43):
American neighborhoods across the country. Now, the credits on the
label of the Midnighter's version of the Twist listed Hank
Ballard as the sole composer of the song, even though
the melody was lifted note for note from that earlier
Midnighter's song that Ballard and cal Green had written together.
And also let's remember that most of the lyrics were
courtesy of the sensational Nightingales and they weren't listed as

(13:06):
writers either. For their part, the Nightingales later on claim
they were actually okay with that, since they felt that
being associated with this raunchy song would have damaged their
career in the gospel world. But I'm not so sure
I'd buy that. If that was the case, why were
they putting so much effort into pitching the song to
R and B singers in the first place. Well, in

(13:27):
any case, their reluctance to be associated with the Twist
turns out to have been a wise choice, as their
career continued successfully for decades. In fact, a version of
the sensational Nightingales still performs today. And as for cal Green, well,
he wasn't okay with the situation at all. But cal
Green wasn't in any position to do anything about it

(13:47):
because he was busted for drug possession in Texas in
nine before the record became a hit, and he spent
the next five years behind bars. Up next up in
America is unhinged by the tempestuous moves of the Twist,
inciting backlash. At about this time, America was reaching the

(14:16):
tail end of the Eisenhower era, that dull conformist period
of gray flannel suits and jello molds, milkshakes and class rings.
But there were signs that society was ready to bust out,
anxious to toss off the shackles of conformity and reach
for a higher form of ecstasy. The first sign of
this yearning could be seen in the lifestyle of the Beatnis,

(14:38):
personified by the characters in Jack Caroac novel On the Road,
whose existentialists lived for today. Rejection of the treadmill of
suburban existence was shaped by the possibility of nuclear apocalypse
that could happen at any moment, and inspired by the
experience of African Americans who shut out the awfulness of
the mainstream bite, instead turning to the pleasures of the moment.

(15:01):
Hip swiveling. Elvis in nineteen fifty six was one of
the first white performers to channel the sexuality of African
American dance in his stage acting. But by nineteen fifty eight,
it seemed like all of Middle America discovered the joys

(15:23):
of swiveling their pelvis is, having become entranced by the
hula hoop fad, which is the nearest White America had
come to the experience of doing the mess around or
ball in the jack. You might even call the hula
hoop the opening act for the Twist, America's newest gift
to the continent, the Hope Crane spreading like wildfire and
lands already ravaged by rock and Ron Man, the filmmaker

(15:47):
behind the great documentary Twist, believes timing played a big
part in the phenomenon. The world was changing towards the
kind of a personal liberation, which is what led the
Twist to free form dancing, first releasing your partner, and
then the medic dances and then do your own thing,
which was you know, that kind of nuclear explosions that

(16:11):
happens in the sixties, and it was a release from
a kind of conformity and the kind of view of
cookie colored green or gray flannel suit society that was
name pushed down everyone's throats. In November of nineteen fifty nine,
Hank Ballot in the Midnighters did a ten day run
at the Royal Theater in Baltimore. They played in front

(16:34):
of nearly exclusively black audiences who got a chance to
witness the Midnighters wild dance routine, which they did while
they played The Twist. Now, the Midnighters weren't dancing the
Twist on stage, as the world would eventually come to
know it. There wasn't even a specific dance called the
twist at that time, but instead they wiggled their hips
and their upper legs while keeping both feet together, kind

(16:57):
of like what audiences were instructed to do in that
song The mess around. The kids in the audience at
the Royal Theater for those midnighters gigs loved it, and
they began to make their own adjustments to those Midnighters
twist moves. And then they brought those moves back to
their high schools where they taught the moves to their friends.
It was these kids in Baltimore that refined the twist

(17:19):
and created the dance that eventually took the world by storm.
A group of these kids then brought those moves to
the set of The Buddy Dean Show Payton for the
next big part of The Buddy Dean Show, following Station Identification,
which was a daily music program on TV in Baltimore
where local kids danced to records and performers came on
the show to lip sync their latest hits in front

(17:40):
of the studio audience and the kids watching at home live. Okay,
here is the big dance of this season. Al Brown
and his version of now. The Buddy Dean Show, like
most TV dance shows of that period, did not have
a racially integrated audience. The show practiced a policy that
they refer to as separate but equal, although in reality

(18:03):
it was far from equal. The audience on The Buddy
Dean Show consisted entirely of white dancers, except for one
Monday per month when black kids were invited to come
onto the show. Officially, this day was known as Special
Guest Day. Among black kids in Baltimore, it went by
the name Black Monday, and some white kids in Baltimore

(18:24):
had racist names for it. By the way, you might
recognize the state of affairs I'm describing on The Buddy
Dean Show as one of the main plot points in
the movie Hairspray, which was directed by Baltimore native John Waters.
In fact, John Waters based hair Sprays fictional TV dance
party host Corny Collins on Buddy Dean. Nice, white kids,

(18:47):
we have our the latest. Once the black kids started
doing the twist on The Buddy Dean Show during Special
Guest Day, it caught on with the white kids who
danced on the show as well. In early nineteen sixty

(19:07):
Freddie Boom Boom. Cannon, a singer signed to a Philadelphia
label called Swan Records, appeared on the Buddy Dean Show
to promote his latest single, Way Down Yonder in New Orleans.
After Freddie Cannon finished performing, Buddy Dean pulled him aside

(19:29):
and said, watch these kids dance to this next song,
and he played Hank Ballard to the Twist. He gave
Freddie Cannon a copy of that record to bring back
to Philadelphia to play for Dick Clark, the host of
American Bandstand, the number one team dance show in the
whole country, which broadcast from Philadelphia. Hank Ballard tells the
story of what happened when Dick Clark heard his record.

(19:50):
He called Dick Clark, so, you said, see these kids
a little bit doing a dance called Twist. You know
it's the song by Hank Ballons Dick ow do you
want to hear all you want on the end? Because
I know it was another one of little So Dick
Clark suggested to Freddie Cannon, why don't you record it,
I'll play your version. Well, of course, Dick Clark was

(20:10):
willing to play a Freddie Cannon recording of the Twist
Dick Clark was part owner of Swan Records, and Dick
Clark featured the artist from that label on American Bandstand
a lot. In fact, Freddie Cannon performed on American Bandstand
more times than any recording artist in the show's history.
He was on American Bandstand a hundred and ten times.

(20:32):
But unfortunately for Freddie Cannon, Bernie Bennett, who was the
principal owner of Swan Records, rejected the idea of the
twist because he wanted Freddie to focus on promoting Way
Down Yonder in New Orleans. Meanwhile, Hank Ballard heard about
the kids dancing the twist on the Buddy Dean Show,
and he was more convinced than ever that his recording
of the Twist should have been a big sensation. So

(20:56):
he went into the studio and recorded a new song
called finger Popping Time, which had the same beat as
the twist and more or less the same melodopop Popping Time.

(21:17):
As soon as King Records put out Fingerpop in Time
in May of nineteen sixty, it began to become popular.
The kids on the Buddy Dean Show, we're doing the
twist to finger Pop in Time, and so were some
kids on American Bandstand, although Dick Clark instructed the cameras
not to show them while they were doing that dance.
Dick Clark was beginning to see a lot of potential

(21:37):
in this twist dance, and his wheels were starting to spin.
On June, Hank Ballot in the Midnighters appeared live on
American Bandstand and the audience twisting to finger Popping Time
was out of control, so much so that King Records
re released Hank Ballots recording of the Twist, even though
it was a year and a half old and finger

(21:58):
Popping Time was shooting up the charts. When Hank Ballard's
re released single of the Twist showed up on the
chart in mid July, all Dick Clark needed to do
was get behind it and it would have exploded. But
that's not what Dick Clark did. Realizing how big the
Twist could be, Dick Clark wanted to control how it
was presented and by whom, and he most certainly didn't

(22:20):
want the Twist to just be another one of those
dirty Hank Ballard records. Importantly, Dick Clark wanted the Twist
to be seen as something that originated on American Bandstand.
Hi this Dick Clark, and it's time now for American Bandstand.

(22:45):
Throughout the show's history, part of the mystique of American
band Stand was this idea that those white kids in
the audience were making up the dances that they did,
but in reality, they were usually learning those dances from
black kids in their high school. Hank Ballard remembers, white
kids were trying to dance like black kids. Dad, We
had dancing where they didn't move the hips espensing on

(23:08):
Bandstand and and those type of shows, And if you
had danced without moving the hips with it just ain't happening.
Ron Man in his Twist movie interviewed some of the
white Philadelphia teenagers who introduced dances on Bandstand in the
late fifties and early sixties, and this is how they
recalled those days. Actually, it was kind of a surprise
when he asked us on air where you learned to dance.

(23:31):
We didn't really know quite how to handle it. It
wasn't that he said you can't say black people. He
didn't say that. It's just at the time that he
asked that question, we didn't really want to say that
all black people taught us to us, we always sort
of course they definitely did it better. But of course
recu the female and got all the credit for it,
you know in our letters from fans. Now it's wasn't

(23:55):
fair really to think about it. At that time, you
weren't thinking that you were, really aren't. You didn't think
you were stealing anything, right, absolutely, but you are now.
I mentioned earlier that Dick Clark was a part owner
of Swan Records, but that was far from the only
music company he had a stake in at the beginning
of the sixties. He actually had an interest in thirty

(24:16):
three different music companies, and he owned publishing rights to
a hundred and sixties songs, most of which he acquired
without having to put up any money. And needless to say,
if your song was owned by Dick Clark, you got
a lot of exposure on American bandstand But Dick Clark's
days owning music companies came to an abrupt end in
May of nineteen sixty when he was asked to testify

(24:38):
in front of Congress as part of a Paola investigation,
which involved allegations that DJs on radio stations were playing
records in exchange for cash paid by record companies. The
investigation was partially instigated by the major record labels, who
had mostly stayed out of the rock and roll business
in those early days, and who wanted to regain their

(24:58):
dominance of the record mark it by putting those independent
labels who were releasing rock and roll records back in
their place. By the way, the independent labels definitely were
paying DJs for airplay, but until after the payola hearings,
that actually wasn't illegal, and neither was Dick Clark's ownership
of all those companies and copyrights. Anyway. By the time

(25:19):
Dick Clark testified before Congress, he'd been given an ultimatum
by ABC Television, the network that broadcast American Bandstand. He
could either get out of the music business or get
out of the television business. Dick Clark wisely chose to
remain host of American Bandstand, and he divested himself of
all of his music holdings. One of the companies Dick
Clark sold off his interest in, Cameo Parkway Records, was

(25:43):
also based in Philadelphia. Even though he no longer had
a financial stake in the company, Dick Clark remaining close
with Calman and Bernie Lowe, the owners of Cameo Parkway,
who until the divestment had been Dick Clark's business partners
in numerous very lucrative music enter prizes. Cameo Parkway specialized
in putting out records that jumped on the bandwagon of

(26:05):
whatever was happening in pop music at any given moment,
and with a built in promotional vehicle in the form
of airplay on American Bandstand, they saw a lot of success,
especially with a teen idol named Bobby Rydell, who, like
Freddie Boom Boom Cannon, appeared on American Bandstand a lot

(26:33):
after Hank Balor performed on Bandstand. Dick Clark called Bernie
Lowe and told him that if he could find someone
to record a version of the Twist, American Bandstand would
really get behind it. Bernie Lowe suggested a young local
singer with whom Dick Clark was already pretty familiar, although
he was by no means the star. His name was
Ernest Evans, the world knows him as Chubby Checker. Up next,

(26:57):
how Chubby Checker got that name? And said, hips around
the world in motion. Actually it was Dick Clark's wife,
who gave Ernest Evans the name Chevy Checker in the
first place you see in Late Night, Dick Clark and

(27:19):
his wife Barbara had the idea of recording a special
Christmas record as a holiday gift for their friends. They
wanted a singer who could imitate a few of the
biggest rock and roll singers of the day, like Elvis,
Little Richard and Fats Domino, all singing jingle bells. Bernie
Lowe at Cameo Parkway suggested this local teenager named Ernest
Evans who'd come by the office a few times trying

(27:41):
to get a record deal. He had a big voice,
and apparently he was really good at imitating other singers.
The kid was an unlikely recording artist, to say the least.
He was kind of overweight and had a day job
as a chicken plucker at Henry Coulter Piano's poultry shop
on South nine Street in Philly. So they brought Ernest
Evans in to make this Christmas record, and while he

(28:03):
was in the studio doing an imitation of Fats Domino
singing jingle bells, Barbara Clark walked in. She heard him singing,
took one look at him and said, you're Chubby. Your
Chubby Checker like Fats Domino, because you're doing one of
his songs. The name stuck, and based on that musical
Christmas card, Chubby Checker got a record deal with Cameo Parkway,

(28:25):
and Henry Coulter Piano left the poultry business to become
Chubby Checkers manager, and while he was at it, he
changed his name to Henry Colt. The first thing Cameo
Parkway did with Chubby Checker was send him into the
studio to record another song where he imitated popular rock
and rollers. This time they were all going to be singing.
Mary had a little lamb. The record was called The

(28:46):
Class and it just barely made it into the top
forty in the summer of nineteen ninety. Since Chubby Checker

(29:10):
was so good at doing impressions, the owners of Cameo
Parkway figured he'd be the perfect person to do a
Hank Ballard imitation on this cover version of the Twist
that Dick Clark was requesting, and so in late June
he went into the studio with a producer named David
pell A. Pell assembled a group of great Philadelphia session
players who sat around a record player in the studio

(29:31):
playing the Hank Ballard version of The Twist again and again,
studying every aspect of it so they could copy it.
But they didn't exactly copy it. They added a couple
of new elements that proved to be very significant Now
to this day, there are a lot of R and
B purists out there who were offended by the very

(29:52):
idea of Chubby Checker covering Hank Ballard's record The Twist
instead of letting Hank Ballard have the hit with the
song he wrote. But putting the issue of fairness aside
for a second, you can make a pretty compelling argument
that Chubby Checker's version of the Twist is actually a
much better pop record. It's younger sounding, it's more exuberant,

(30:13):
it's shinier, and certainly it sounds a lot more modern
than the Hank Ballard record. There are a couple of
concrete reasons for this. For starters, while Hank Ballard's Twist
opens with a very traditional sounding R and B piano,
the Chubby Checker record immediately hits you with a more

(30:36):
bombastic opening, This rumbling saxophone that kicks things off like
there's a jet plane zooming by overhead, and that keeps
wailing underneath the vocals, driving the record forward and then.

(30:57):
Even though both records are essentially the same temper and
are played in the same time signature, the drumbeat on
Chubby Checkers record has a completely different feel. It feels faster,
more intense. Ellis Tollin, who drummed on the session, is
playing these straight eighth notes on his symbols throughout the
whole record, which gives it this extra layer of energy

(31:18):
that simply does not exist on the Hank Ballard record.
By way of illustration, let's compare the feel of the
two records and contrast how the listeners experiencing the two grooves.
Here's Hank Ballard one two three four one two three four.
Here's Chubby Checker one five six seven eight one two

(31:42):
three five six seven eight. Most importantly, though, is the
performance of Chubby Checker himself. He may have set out
to mimic Hank Ballard, but while on this record, he
can't help but sound like a kid having the time
of his life. Chubby Checker probably knew that this was
his big chance, and if everything went right, his life

(32:02):
was about to change, and he sounds like a young
man in a hurry to make that happen. Hank Ballard's vocal,
on the other hand, is a bit more relaxed and blues.
And then there's the way the vocal is recorded. Chubby
Checker's voice is pretty powerful to start with, but it's
drenched in this reverb on this record that makes it
sound like it's just stretching into infinity. Make no mistake

(32:31):
about it, Hank Ballard's Twist was a great fifties R
and B record, but Cheby Checkers Twist is the sound
of the nineteen fifties turning into the sixties. As you're listening,
It's the sound of America transitioning from those dreary Eisenhower
years to JFK and Camelong. Chubby Checker turned out to

(32:55):
be the perfect salesman for a dance that introduced by
someone else might have been rejected his lewd and the
deal with the public was sealed the very first time
Chubby Checker did the Twist on TV. After playing the
record incessantly on American band Stand for a couple of weeks,
Dick Clark introduced Chubby Checker to the world on August six, nine,

(33:17):
But he didn't do it on American Bandstand. No, Dick
Clark put Chubby Checker on his weekly Saturday night prime
time ABC program, The Dick Clark Show, which got a
much bigger audience. Pretty frightening thing is sweeping the country
all over the place. Hottest dance sensation in the last
four years, I think, called the Twist. Ladies and gentlemen,
here's Chubby Checker. When Chubby Checker did the Twist on

(33:43):
The Dick Clark Show that night, it was a streamlined
version of the dance, less freewheeling than what the black
kids in Baltimore were doing, but that was the appeal
of it. It was a dance that anyone could do
and have a great time doing it. The twist that
Chubby demonstrated that August night on The Dick Clark Show
was the epitome of simplicity. No matter how awkward or

(34:04):
uncoordinated you were, you could finesse your way through it.
And so while Chevy Checker may have been copying Hank
Ballard's record, his real contribution to the twist was formalizing
the dance into the version that the world is known
for the past sixty years. And Chevy Checker even figured
out how to describe the twist in a way that

(34:24):
anyone could understand. I showed people my concept of what
the twist was to me. You remove your hands from
your partner, putting out a cigarette, both feet, weaping off
your bottom of the towel to the beat of the music.
People understood that you didn't have to be a great
dance to twist. You just need to do all you

(34:46):
need to do, those little steps of a little imagination
and you were home. That was a success of it simple,
It's easy to do, and it has a beat. Was
it earlier? I suggested we put the issue of fairness
to I for a second, but now let's deal with it.
Here's Hank Ballard recalling the first time he heard Chubby
Checkers recording of the Twist. I was in mine and

(35:08):
during the time in nineteen six days, I was taking
a swim and I heard this record Twist blasting across
white radio, big pop station, and nine that Wow, I'm
fine against the white A play I'm gonna be a superstar.
And if it's Tivineck, I thought it was me. You know,
he had Chef had done such a beautiful clone with

(35:29):
my record, you know, and I'm grateful that he did,
because it takes a master the emulating my sound, and
he did it. You know, as I was looking, I
thought it was used to help me in Garden to
the almost end of the record. If tiv check if
Chef hadn't recorded the twist, it wouldn't do as big
as it is today. That's for ship. So what was
it about Chubby Checker that enabled him to perform a

(35:51):
dance that was the definition of what White America considered
dirty up until that time, gyrating your pelvis and get
away with it. Well, Chubby Checker possessed some qualities that
made him a much more likely candidate from mainstream stardom
than Hank Ballard. He was gregarious, wholesome looking. He was

(36:12):
this lovable teddy bear with a big open smile. And now,
let's be brutally honest, he was a non threatening, de sexualized,
light skinned African American. Hank Ballard, for his part, had
a much harder edge. He exuded that streetwise quality that
today we might call gangster. For white America, Hank Ballard

(36:33):
doing the twist was dirty, Chubby Checker not so much.
And Hank Ballard himself understood pretty quickly that in Chubby Checker,
the Twist had found the ideal ambassador. So he embraced
it because as the writer of the song, it was
in Hank Ballard's financial interest to have that record become
as big as possible, and so he took some solace

(36:54):
as he watched Chubby Checker twist his way into history.
But it's still hurt and it speaks volumes about America
in that period that Dick Clark wouldn't give Hank Ballard
a chance. Dick Clark, for his part, understood he denied
Hank Ballard his big shot at mainstream stardom. When the
Chubby Checker version was released, Hank Ballard's Twist was flying

(37:15):
up the chart, but with all the support Chubby Checker
was getting on TV from Dick Clark, it was no contest.
Hank Ballard's Twist stalled at number twenty eight while Chubby
Checker was rocketing to the top of the chart. Dick
Clark must have felt some pangs of guilt though, because
he not only heavily featured finger pop and time on bandstand,
driving get into the national top ten, but he also

(37:37):
did the same for Hank Ballard's next single, Let's Go,
Let's Go, Let's Go, turning that into another top ten
pop single. The week after Chubby Checker performed The Twist

(37:59):
live on The Dick Ark Show, the record exploded. By
mid August, it was in the top ten, where it
percolated for six weeks before eventually hitting number one the
third week of September, and although it only spent a
single week at number one, it ended up spending three
months in the top ten, which was a very long
time for a record back then. Now as it happened,

(38:20):
the top ten run of The Twist coincided with the
final stages of the nineteen sixty presidential election and John F.
Kennedy's defeat of Richard Nixon, and Well Eldridge Clever, a
prominent African American writer and political activist who would later
in the decade become one of the leaders of the
Black Panther Party, speculated that perhaps this was more than

(38:40):
a coincidence. Here's Eldridge Clever reading from his book So
on Ice. It is significant that the Twist and the
Hula Hoop came into the scene in all their fury
at the close of the Eisenhower and the dawn of
the Kennedy era. It could be interpreted as a rebellion
against the that TUIs Eisenhower years. It could also be

(39:03):
argued that the same collective urge that gave rise to
the twist also swept Kennedy into office. I shudder to
think that, given the closeness of the final vote in
nineteen sixty, Richard Nixon might have won the election in
a breeze if he had persuaded one of his ultra
feminine daughters not to mention ultra pats to do the

(39:27):
twist in public. Chevy Checker danced the twist relentlessly on
every TV show he could appear on for the next
two years, which was absolutely crucial to the success of
the dance. For a big man, chevy Checker was incredibly
light on his feet, and he made the twist look
easy and fun, and that was the key. It was
actually reported in the press that he twisted on TV

(39:50):
so much he lost thirty five pounds, And even after
Chevy Checker's record fell off the chart by the end
of nineteen sixty, the twist remained massive with teens on
the dance floor. Here's Chubby Checker, speculating on the reason
for the twist popularity, It was hips and that was
nasty things like that. I mean, we just got over

(40:11):
Elvis Presley gy rating, We just got over kids going
crazy dancing little Richard Tutti fruti al Rudy. I mean,
now we got this, this very suggestive movement. Of course,
the twist was met with predictable condemnation from some quarters
of adult society. The well known British journalist Beverly Nichols,
visiting the U S, wrote, I'm not easily shocked, but

(40:35):
the twist shocked me. Half Negroid, half Manhattan, and when
you see it on its native heath, wholly frightening. The
essence of the twist, the curious, perverted heart of it,
is that you dunce it alone. Now, the twist was
instantly appealing to teenagers, in part because it allowed them

(40:55):
to cut loose in a way that met with some
adult disapproval. But also the Twiz didn't even require a partner,
so a boy didn't need to muster the courage to
ask a girl to dance, and a girl didn't need
to wait to be invited to the dance floor, and
she wouldn't have to follow the lead of her partner either,
hinting just a wee bit at the women's liberation movement

(41:16):
which was just around the corner, and teenagers facing each
other on the dance floor shaking their pelvis is at
each other. Now, that was previously unheard of in white America.
It was a real violation of the accepted sexual code,
and as such it began to shake teenagers loose from
their restrictive cultural mornings, providing an early glimpse of the

(41:37):
revolution in youth culture that marked the rest of the decade.
By late nineteen sixty, with a Twist taking up residence
on the dance floor, there were a few unsuccessful attempts
by other recording artists to jump on the Twist bandwagon.
For instance, then unknown producer named Phil Specter went into
the studio with a group called the Top Notes to

(41:58):
make a record called Twist and Shout, which quickly sank
without a trace, But that song You're the Course a
chief prominence a bit further down the line. As for

(42:21):
Chevy Checker himself, well, he followed up the Twist in
early with another number one record, Pony Time, which instructed
listeners to try a new dance like the Twist. Pony
Time was a cover, this time of a record by

(42:44):
an R and B singer named Don Kove, and once again,
Chevy Checker's cover version, with all of Dick Clark's TV support,
stopped the original and its tracks. Don Kove's record stalled
at number sixty. Incidentally, it turns out the Pony Times
melody borrowed from yet another Hank Ballard song called Sexy Ways.

(43:16):
By the summer of nineteen sixty one, Chubby Checker was
back to doing the Twist special The Twist and Scraze
sweeps the world. The song and the singer Let's started
the most explosive that screze in a generation. Our feature
Let's Twist Again was a song written especially for Chubby
Checker by Cameo Parkways Cowman and David pell And it

(43:38):
was another big top ten record in the US. In
the UK, Let's Twist Again was even bigger than the Twist.
It went all the way to number one. Over there
looking good. I'm going to sing my song. It won't
sing wrong. We're going to do the Twist now. Musically,
Let's Twist Again really bore very little resemblance to the twist.

(44:02):
While Chubby Checkers cover, like Hank Ballard's original, had its
foundations in the blues, Let's Twist Again was pure pop
in the tin pan alley sense of the word. Still
it did the trick. It provided instant nostalgia for teenagers
who at parties and in clubs across the USA. We're
still twisting up a storm. Let's Twist Again even won

(44:24):
the first Grammy Award ever given out in the category
Best Rock and Roll Recording. Twist Again. Next time on

(44:50):
Speed of Sound, we tackle part two of the incredible
story of the Twist, as the song roars back to
number one a year after it swipped off the charts
and becomes bigger than ever, this time finding popularity with
the grown ups and a New York City dive bar
which ties to the mob, shoots to the front page
of the tabloids and the top of the music charts,

(45:11):
all by adding new flavor and spin to the twist craze.
Plus JFK and Jackie are caught twisting in the White
House Or were they? Until next time? You can find

(45:34):
me on Twitter at Stevie g Pro. Speed of Sound
is executive produced by Lauren Bright Pacheco, Noel Brown and me.
Taylor shakogn Is our supervising producer, editor and sound designer.
Additional sound designed by Tristan McNeil. Speed of Sound would
like to extend a big thanks to filmmaker Ron Man
for his permission to use excerpts from his sensational documentary Twist.

(45:59):
I highly red com in checking it out. I'm Steve Greenberg.
Until next time, keep listening from music that moves you.
Speed of Sound is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, check out the
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