August 25, 2020 • 53 mins
Steve traces how rock and roll is embraced by adults for the very first time, as the twist moves from a notorious Mob owned NYC dive bar all the way to high society, the White House and a very enthusiastic JFK.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Speed of Sound is a production of I Heart Radio.
The nineteen fifties shifted into the swinging sixties with more
of a swivel and a twist. By the dawn of
the decade, the song that launched a dance graze had
blossomed into a full fledged cultural revolution. I'm Steve Greenberg,
(00:23):
and we're about to tackle the second half of the
story behind the dance that changed history on this episode
of Speed of Sound. In a bar called the Peppermint
Lounge opened to New York City. It was located on
(00:43):
forty Street between six and Seventh Avenue, right in the
heart of the theater district, but it definitely did not
draw a theater going crowd. The regulars at the Peppermint
Lounge were more likely to be bikers, sailors, prostitutes, and
teenagers from the suburbs who were drawn to Manhattan to
take advantage of New York's lower drinking age. In short,
(01:05):
the Peppermint Lounge was your classic dive bar. It was
also a mafia front. While the club's liquor license listed
the owner as Ralph SAgs, a retired New York Police captain,
the real owner was Johnny Biello, who was a coppo
in the Geno vic crime family. Biello earned his stripes
under such mob legends as Frank Costello, Lucky Luciano, and
(01:28):
Dutch Schultz. For Johnny Biello, the Peppermint Lounge was a
place to run his gambling and loan sharking operations out
of As such, it was best for the Peppermint Lounge
to stay under the radar. The club didn't even have
a telephone. That way, the Feds had no phone they
could tap. Make no mistake, The Peppermint Lounge was one
(01:48):
tough joint. The bouncers were all professional wrestlers, including guys
like Lou Albano later known as Captain Lou and Lenny
the Bull Montana, who in V two played the gangster
Luca Brazzi in the movie The Godfather. Was this that
scilic message that means Luca Brassi sleeps with the fishes.
(02:08):
The Peppermin Lounge had a long barn. At the end
of that bar, there was a bandstand and a tiny
dance floor. Bar bands would play rhythm and blues while
the regulars got drunk. In September of nineteen sixty, a
band from New Jersey was hired to play three nights
worth of shows at the club. The name of the
band was the star Lighters. Their leader was a saxophone
(02:31):
player named joe Denny Kola, known professionally as Joey D.
Let's let Joey D tell you their story himself. Well,
I was very fortunate to be born in Passaic, New Jersey,
and I went to the same high school the Charells
went to, and they actually got me my first record
contract with Stepter Records. And the owner of the company
(02:53):
was also from Passaic, New Jersey, Florence Greenberg. And this
this is how it all started. Back then in fifties,
I was actually playing saxophone and singing background while the
records they made for Scepter went nowhere. Joey D and
the Starlighters were building a reputation as a great live band.
We became New Jersey's number one band. And how we
(03:17):
did that was we worked at a place called the
Irvington House right off the Jersey Parkway, and while we
were there, we would back up the stars that would
come in, i e. Frankie Avalon, Connie Francis, Bobby Rydell Fabian,
all of these people came in and my band was
that good that we backed up all of these superstars,
(03:39):
And I said, man, one of these days, I'm gonna
be one of you guys. And I told that Bobby
ray Del and he said, Joey, you guys are really good.
I think you're gonna make it. One night in September
of nineteen sixty, the Starlighters were playing a gig when
fate intervened and then I will also worked at the
club being Lodi, New Jersey, Kolala Varry's. And while we
(03:59):
were there, we had this agent stopping. He saw all
the cars in the in the parking lot was on
Root forty six in Lodai, and he stopped and see
what all the commotion was about. So he came in.
His name was Don Davis, and he was an agent
from New York City and he saw the band that
during my break he called me over and said who
he was, and he had a gig in New York City.
(04:20):
Would we be interested in New York City's The dream
of all brands is from New Jersey anyway, and I said,
of course. So he booked us for three days at
the Peppermint Lounge. The Starlighters arrived at the Peppermint Lounge
for their three night gig in October of nineteen sixty,
just as Chevy Checkers recording of The Twist was peaking
on the charts, but Joey d was already familiar with
(04:43):
Hank Ballard's version of the song. I had the first
integrated band in New Jersey to my knowledge, and we
had a guy in the group called Rogers Freeman who
was my lead vocalists, along with David Burgotti, who would
later become one of the young rascals. So Rob just
said there's a group playing at Ben's Cotton Club in Newark,
(05:04):
New Jersey named Pearl Reeves Band, and I said, well,
let's go check them out. So David not were the
only white people in to join, and that wasn't the
only time, because we loved R and B music. So
during the Pearl Reeves is break, they were playing uh
the jukebox and I see these kids doing this real
(05:26):
cool dance, and I go up to the jukebox to
see what the dance, what the song was, and it
was Hank Ballot in the midnighters, the Twist. So I said,
this is great, man, we gotta put this as part
of our show. I bought the record, brought it to
the Starlighters, and it became the most popular part of
our show. The three night gig went so well that
(05:47):
the club asked Joey d and the Starlighters to stay
on as the house band. Well, the three Day Gig
became thirteen months as a house band. Pretty soon, the
Peppermint Lounge started to attract a lot of kids from
New Jersey who had heard that the star Lighters were
in residence there, and those kids went wild every night
when the band played the Twist. The tiny dance floor
(06:10):
at the Peppermint Lounge was packed night after night with
New Jersey teenagers all doing that dance. Nearly a year
into the Starlighter's residence at the Peppermint Lounge, a man
named Lee Rattner, who was an associate of Johnny Biello,
came to the Peppermint Lounge with his girlfriend, Grace Palmer.
Lee spent most of that night in the back room
(06:31):
talking business with Johnny Biello, while Grace sat at the
bar taking in the scene. When Lee and Johnny finally
concluded their business, Lee came out to the bar and
found his girlfriend sitting there. Transfixed by the dancing, wanting
to join in. Even this inspired Lee Rattner to try
to get an item placed in the gossip pages about
the scene at the Peppermint Lounge. He managed to reach
(06:52):
Liz Smith, who would eventually go on to become a
legendary gossip columnist herself, but who at that point was
an assistant to Charlie Knickerbocker, the very influential columnist for
the New York Journal American, whose gossip column was syndicated
in newspapers across America. The name Charlie Knickerbocker was of
(07:13):
course a pseudonym. His real name was Igor Cassini, and
he was the brother of the famous fashion designer Oleg Cassini,
who designed First Lady Jackie Kennedy's clothes and who the
First Lady referred to as Secretary of Style. Charlie Knickerbocker's
column specialized in covering what was known back then as
(07:33):
cafe society, the comings and goings of New York's upper crust.
It was Charlie Knickerbocker who named that crowd the jet set.
In fact, anyway, on September twenty one, Charlie Knickerbocker ran
an item in his column stating that Prince Obolenski, a
descendant of Russian royalty and a well known jet setter,
(07:55):
was sited at New York's chic Peppermint Lounge doing the twist.
Nick Corbaco wrote, the twist is the new teenage dance craze,
but you don't have to be a teenager to do
the twist. Of course, by this point, the twist was
far from new. Chubby Checker's record was more than a
year old. But let's put that aside and focus on
the fact that Prince Obolensky had never actually been to
(08:17):
the Peppermint Lounge. The whole item was fabricated. Nonetheless, the
story took on a life of its own. Other society
columnists also started mentioning the Peppermint Lounge, and soon enough,
actual jet setters and celebrities began to show up at
the club, anxious not to miss out on the action.
Within weeks, the Peppermint Lounge was crawling with celebrities Marilyn Monroe,
(08:41):
Maurice Chevalier, Judy Garland, Noel Coward, Shirley McClain, Truman, Capodi,
Greta Garbo, Tennessee Williams, and so many more of their
ilk started to turn the Peppermint Lounge into their clubhouse,
abandoning their usual haunts like El Morocco or the Store Club,
and crowd onto the tiny dance floor along with the
(09:02):
bikers and the teenagers from New Jersey. The crowd soon
became out of control, with people lined up around the
block trying to get in night after night. Journalist Tom
Wolfe noted everybody was there and behindmost were laying fives, tens,
and twenty dollar bills on cops, doormen, and a couple
of sets of Major d's to get within sight of
(09:22):
the bandstand and the dance floor the size of somebody's kitchen.
Then the national media began to take notice, adding to
the frenzy. To the regulars of the Peppermint, the twist
is not new. But then society discoverned, and almost overnight,
the Rolls Royce set again. The mingle that the motorcycle
set so now they rub elbows and the mob that
(09:43):
lines up every night outside the Peppermint Lounge. The mink
stole has become as common as the bulky sweater and
the black leather jacket. The visitors to the Peppermint Lounge
now include such notables as Mrs Jane Smith, a sister
of the President of the United States and the United
States Senator Jacob Jackett, and sometimes even highest social standing.
You can't get you in as money. As a thousand
(10:04):
customers are turned away every night. The streets around the
Peppermint Lounge were closed off to traffic. Police barricades were
set up, and mounted police were brought in to keep
the crowds waiting outside from spilling out from the sidewalk.
Major celebrities like Dick Clark and even Chubby Checker himself
were forced to endure the long lines outside in order
(10:25):
to gain entrance. As Joey d recalled, well, it was
a nice, beautiful mix in the beginning until about two
weeks later, because now it's all about the money, as
you know, and the society people carried a lot of weight,
and they were famous people, so of course they got
to the front of the line, and the young kids
(10:45):
and all got jumped at the side, which was kind
of sad because they were my real audience, and they
were the kids that catered to, and they were the
ones who who made the Peppermint Lounge what it was.
What was Truly remarkable about this whole scene was that
adults had never shown the slightest interest in rock and
roll before, but now, all of a sudden, they couldn't
(11:08):
get enough of the Twist. Remember, in its first go
round a year earlier, adults had condemned the twist as lewd.
New York's Roseland Ballroom banned it entirely, But now the
grown ups were leading the charge. A year after the
twist cross racial barriers in Baltimore and Philadelphia, it was
now crossing generational barriers in New York and even class barriers.
(11:33):
Isn't it the thing to do? And I think so, yes,
it really is the thing to do. What would be
some of the out things to do? I guess the
only comment I could make on that is not to
do it would be out. I mean, if you don't
do it, you're just considered out. I don't know if
anyone that doesn't do it. At the moment, the Arthur
Murray dance studios across the country saw a massive increase
(11:56):
in enrollment as they promised to teach the Twist in
its easy lessons. According to one dance instructor, the twist
allows a lot more individualism than most popular dances. People
are getting fed up with being automatons, whether it's on
the factory production line or a dance floor, And according
(12:16):
to Newsweek, the Twist, a rock and roll comedy of arrows,
has suddenly turned the Peppermint Lounge, a run of the
Gin Mill, into a melting pot for socialites, sailors, and salesman.
But not everyone loved the idea of adults becoming infatuated
with the Twist. The New York Times was particularly harsh.
(12:37):
Arthur Gelb, who wrote for the paper about culture, sneered,
cafe society hasn't gone slumming with such energy since It's
four Ways into Harlem in the twenties, and the Times
education writer lamented, instead of youth growing up, adults are
sliding down. Of course, this bright media spotlight was entirely
(12:58):
counter to the original purpose of the Peppermint Lounge, which
was to avoid attention so it could serve as a
front for mob activity. The owners quickly adapted, however, embracing
the success, and eventually they opened Peppermint lounges and other
cities around the world. Now, the Twist frenzy was definitely
a signal that America was changing rapidly. The baby boomers
(13:20):
were bringing down the average age of the US population.
There was a young, charismatic president in Washington, and the
jet set was for the very first time taking its
cues from youth culture, notably rock and roll. After ignoring
an even condemning rock and roll for the first seven
years of its existence on the national stage, adults now
(13:41):
wanted in on the action, and the twist was an
easy way for adults to glom onto youth culture. It
was so simple to learn, anyone could do it. You
actually have to wonder what the Arthur Murray dance studios
even taught in those six lessons. Anyway, soon the great
thought leaders of the establishman began to weigh in on
(14:01):
the phenomenon. One professor referred to the twist as valid
manifestation of the age of anxiety and outward manifestation of
the anguish, frustration and uncertainty of the nineteen sixties, an
effort to release some of the tension which, if suppreston buried,
could war and destroy. And the acclaimed media guru Marshall
(14:22):
McLuhan had this to say, I don't mindself think of
it as a as a sort of damns. It looks
very very clean, very casual like conversation without words, the
sort of highly expressive conversational style without words. It didn't
take long for the folks at Cameo Parkway Records to
(14:42):
realize that the Twist still had a lot of life
left in it, and since now it was a completely
different audience that was dancing the Twist, they didn't see
the need to record a new Twist song to cash
in on the craze. They just re released Chubby Checkers
nineteen sixty recording of The Twist and started promoting it
again to radio stations. For his part, Chubby Checker picked
(15:03):
up the pace of his TV appearances, finally getting a
booking to perform The Twist on The Ed Sullivan Show
in late October. From there, it was a steady climb
back up the charts, and by the beginning of nineteen two,
the Twist found itself once again in the number one position,
this time holding down the top slot for two weeks,
(15:24):
which is one week more than it had the first
time around. It would certainly have stayed at the top longer,
but this time it had competition up next the peppermin
(15:44):
Lounge inspires a number one record that gives the Twist
craze a whole new spin and flavor. All the media
attention surrounding the Peppermint Lounge had put a bright spotlight
on Joey D and the Starlighters, and it wasn't long
(16:06):
before record companies were approaching the band to record their
own Twist record. Here's Joey D. So I had three
record companies come in and Vye for our contract signing.
I had the Roulette Records. I had Atlantic Records and
Capitol Records. I talked to all three. I talked toometer
it again from Atlantic, and I told Nick Benett from
(16:26):
Capitol and Mars Levy from Roulette Records, and I said,
whoever sciences has to have a recording out by us
within two to three weeks. And Atlantic said they couldn't
do it, and Capital said they couldn't do it, and
Maurice Levy said, I'll haven't done in two weeks, and
so we opted for Maurice Levy, not knowing he was
connected with the Genovese family and the mob and all
(16:50):
the other stuff which I learned later. We've mentioned Morris
Levy previously on Speed of sound in our episode about
sugar Hill Records, but his tentacles reached a US rock
and rolls first four decades. Like Johnny Biello, Morris Levy
was close with the Genovese crime family, although as a
Jew he couldn't formally be a member, and like Johnny Biello,
(17:12):
he was involved in the nightclub business as the owner
of Birdland, the famed jazz club on Broadway. Morris Levy
owned a whole slew of record labels and publishing companies,
and was quite fond of listing his own name as
the composer on songs he released, like the classic Frankie
Lyman hit why Do Fools Fall in Love? What Fools?
(17:46):
Needless to say, Morris Levy did not in reality composed
of that song or any other. Morris Levy also managed
the early rock and roll DJ Allen Freed, and for
a while he tried to copyright the phrase rock and
roll l itself, shaking down small labels who used the
term on their records, until finally a judge ruled that
(18:06):
the phrase rock and roll was in the public domain.
Morris Levy was certainly a man not to be messed with,
as Joey d. Recalled. There was another guy reluctant to
sign a contract, so Morris had one of his boys
hang him out of a night and story window Buddy
Ankles until he acquiesced. When he pulled them up, he said, okay,
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and where do I sign? Of course he signed. In
late nine, Morris Levy's label, Roulette Records, was on the
verge of bankruptcy, so it was in his best interest
to get a record by Joey Dean. The Starlighter is
released quick before the whole twist Fat hit the wall first,
though Morris Levy insisted on some changes to the group.
(18:48):
I knew I was not a lead singer, and I
had a band. I had a great rock and roll band,
but I needed some great singers. So I got Rogers
Freeman from a group called the Vibrant Tones. I got
the musicians that were integrated into the band, and it
meant it meant a lot to me. And I was
told by by Mars Levy, and he was wasn't very kind,
(19:11):
and in his assessment of my group, he didn't find
that I had the keyboardists and the drummer that they
were black Willie Davis and Carlton Lattimore, but he didn't
like the idea Rogers Freeman being out front. He said,
you gotta get rid of the name. And I said,
what do you mean? He says, if you want the contract,
(19:31):
you gotta get rid of them. And one of my
biggest regrets is I acquiesced. And that's how I got
Larry Venerie in the group, because he wanted three little
Italian white guys out front, and that's what we did.
Morris Levy put Joey D together with the labels musical
director Henry Glover. Does that name sound familiar? A few
years earlier, you may recall from our previous episode, Henry
(19:54):
Glover was the musical director at King Records, and he
produced Hank Ballard's original version of the tw Wist. He's
also the man who insisted that the Twist remained on
the B side of that record and that the A
side be a different song, one that he composed. Well. Now,
Henry Glover was at Roulette Records and he wasn't about
to be wrong about the Twist a second time. He
(20:16):
showed up at the session with Joey D determined to
write a hit, and he made the bold decision that
Joey D's twist record should sound nothing at all like
the Hank Ballard song, and so he came up with
a completely different beat. He also came up with a
name for the song, the Peppermint Twist, and lyrics that
referenced the phenomenon that was happening specifically at the Peppermint Lounge. Well,
(20:45):
the Pepperminsist is me. Things were moving fast for Joey
D and the Starlighters at this point, so when it
came time to record the song, they did it on
a sound stage where Joey D was starring in a
quickie twist theme be called Hey, Let's Twist. Now. Joey
D wasn't the lead singer of the Starlighters, he was
(21:06):
the saxophonist. The lead singer at this point was Dave Brigotti,
who would eventually become part of the group The Young Rascals.
But Henry Glover didn't like the way Dave Bragotti sounded
on the song, and he asked Joey D to give
it a try. And I said, Henry, I'm a background
singing and I played saxophone. I'm not a lead singer.
But he said give it a try. So I went
(21:27):
in the studio with the headset on. The band started
playing the music and I sang, I got a new dance,
and he go and before I even finished the first line,
he said, that's what I want, and I became the
lead singer that Joey deana Starlighters. Not only was the
beat of Peppermin Twist different from the beat of the Twist,
but the actual dance that the Starlighters did on stage
(21:48):
was a little different too. Joey D's twist incorporated circular
arm motions in front of the body and also a
lot of pulling up your legs and jumping into the air,
all while twisting your pelvis, of course. In late November,
(22:09):
just one week after Chubby Checkers Twist reappeared on the
Billboard Hot one hundred, the Pepperman Twist debuted as well.
The two records raced each other up the chart, and
while Chubby Checker got to the top first after two weeks,
Joey D replaced him at number one, and he stayed
there for three weeks. However, Joey De learned that having
a number one record with the Pepperman Twist on Morris
(22:32):
Levy's label wouldn't be the financial bonanza he was expecting.
Mars took me aside and he said, listen, you don't
want any problems for me, And I said, no, I don't.
He said, you're gonna make money performing. That's where you're
gonna make your money. I'm making the money with the records.
That's my business. And what was I to say? So?
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I said, okay, And sure enough here it is, almost
sixty years later, I'm still making money performing. It's so
he could you know that part of the deal worked out,
but the recording and the woryalty part did not work
out well for me. Given the Twist frenzy, it was
inevitable that a delusion of Twist records would flood the market.
(23:15):
First came Dear Lady Twist by Gary U. S. Bonds.
Then the Great Sam Cook described his own experience visiting
the Peppermint Lounge in Twist in the Night Away. Let
(23:36):
me tell you about the place to someone were up
but louey all the way where the people are so gay,
Twist them the night. The Isley Brothers took Twist and
Shout the song that had flopped for the top notes
in sixty and turned it into a massive hits, and
(24:03):
Chubby Checker found himself inside the top ten with yet
another twist record, Slow Twisting, this time in a duet
with a young Philadelphia singer named d D. Sharp. On
(24:26):
On and on it went, with hundreds of twist records
making it to the stores, most of which were putrid
and most of which flopped. Some of these were original
twist songs, and some were just twist versions of songs
that had already existed, like Chubby Checker's remarkable twist version
of Hava Naguila. One of the most awful twist records
(24:54):
was by the well known middlebrow poet Rod McEwen, who
put out a song with a wings worthy title, the
Oliver Twisty Oliver Oliver Oliver Twist. Even Frank Sinatra got
(25:16):
aboard the twist bandwagon. With everybody's twisting, all the kids
were twisted. It didn't take long Big Father, grown upsw
trying it, Who's who was buying it? And I guess
inevitably the Chipmunks released the Alvin Twist. Some adults were holdouts, however,
(25:48):
most notably the great nat King Cole, who took to
the Dinah Shore TV show to sing I won't twist, Well,
they have a new dance out, not I plan to resist,
I will twist. There were even Chubby Checker rip off
(26:11):
artists with ridiculous names like Chunky Checkmate and Pudgy part Cheesy,
but they were thankfully unsuccessful. All in all, twenty three
different singles with the word twist in their title made
the top forty between nineteen sixty and nineteen sixty two.
And by the way, the word twisting was never spelled
(26:33):
with the letter G at the end, always an apostrophe.
Now through it all, the frenzy at the Peppermint Lounge
continued unabated. One night, Joey d recalled a star was
unexpectedly born on the club stage. One evening, we had
the three little young girls come in. They were teenagers, sixteen, seventeen,
(26:53):
and they actually asked me for an opportunity to sing
with the group. And this is during our age when
the place was really booming, and these girls came up
on stage and I said, what the heck, Charrels gave
me an opportunity, so let me give these girls a chance.
But they got up and did though what I say,
(27:13):
Ray Charles is recording and toward a house down and
I immediately hired them, and they went on to become
the Ronetts and Rock and Rose Hall of Fame as
well the Three Girls. The Peppermin Lounge. By this point
had become so popular and crowded that the society folk
needed to find other clubs where they could actually get in.
The best of these, by far, was a club up
(27:35):
in Harlem called Smalls Paradise, which was owned at the
time by basketball star Wilt Chamberlain. When the jet Setters
descended on the club, Wilt the Stilt increased the cover charge,
which did nothing to stop the limousines from snaking around
the walk. The star attractions at Smallest Paradise were mam
Aloo Parks and the park Attes, the house dancers, who
(27:56):
had been major dance stars since the days of the
Lyndy and the How Bandit. Smallest Paradise was led by
saxophonist King Curtis, who played on an endless string of
classic R and B records. In the fifties, when Smalls
became hot with the twisting jet Setters, King Curtis signed
a record deal with Bobby Robinson's Harlem based in Joy
Records and had a big hit with an instrumental called
(28:19):
Soul Twist. By the way, Besides being a great record,
Soul Twist also holds the distinction of being the first
hit record with the word soul in its title, as
that word was just starting to be used to describe
(28:41):
the newest wave of R and B. Now, it didn't
take long for twist exploitation products to start hitting the market.
The Joey D film Haylett's Twist that he was filming
in October, well that was in theaters and time for Christmas.
I mean, we've had on something big, Joey, not just
a new dance, but a new sound, a new B
that's fund the one that hits will happen me, Okay,
(29:03):
So you tell them we're gonna quit school for the Twist,
And for his part, Chubby Checkers starting two feature length
twist movies, Don't Knock the Twist and Twist around the Clock. Baby.
Their dance got a name. Can you see what I'm doing?
You're twisting yourself in a nervous breakdown. That's it, brother, twist.
(29:24):
If you're fruz, easily stay away. Chubby Checker and Joey
D each even made their own twist instructional records. Hi
again back, like I promised, We're ready to do some
more twisting. Turned to the helpful hint section of the
instruction booklet Find it good. Now, those of you who
(29:45):
have partners stand face to face with enough space between
you so you can swing your arms without bruising each other.
By the way, my mom used to tell this story
about how my older brother and his friends in the
neighborhood when they were really little, used to line up
in front of the TV every afternoon to take twist
lessons from Chubby Checker. I always assumed that she was
misremembering and that maybe they did this once. However, Mom
(30:08):
was right. It turns out that for a while, Chubby
Checker hosted these five minute daily twist instruction shows on
TV sponsored by Duncan Heinz Fudge Mix. But I digress.
Of course, there was endless twist merchandise for sale. There
were twist shoes, twist hats, twist skirts, and many of
these items were endorsed by Chubby Checker himself, whose manager
(30:30):
Henry Colt, took out an ad in The New York
Times letting advertisers know that Chubby was for sale. Manufacturers
attention a new nationwide name to pre sell your product.
The Twist with Chubby Checker, King of the Twist, who
created the greatest nationwide dancing years license is available. Big
names mean big business, and just about every TV show
(30:53):
on the air felt obligated to work the twist into
at least one episode. For instance, on The Dick Van
Dyke Show, the suburban housewife Laura Petrie played by Mary
Tyler Moore twisted in her living room. Everybody starting twistle, Everybody,
you'll begin to swizzle twistle, don't know? Sometimes I do.
(31:25):
And on the flint Stones, everybody got down to the
twist in the prehistoric town of Bedrock. Well will twist
around the clock to night and twist twitch Rock is
going to rule with all his mind. Meanwhile, twist Mania
began to go international. It was brought to France by
(31:46):
the Broadway cast of West Side Story, who traveled to
Paris for a limited run of the show. Carrying with
them the latest Twist records. They headed straight to the
chic Parisian nightclubs Share Regine, where they handed their Twist
records to the DJ and set the stage for a
full fledged Twist craze in France. In fact, Johnny Halliday,
(32:07):
the singer known as the French Elvis, spent seven weeks
at number one in France at the end of nine
with his version of Let's twist against its default, The
twist even found its way into the Kennedy White House. Now.
(32:31):
JFK's predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower was no fan of the twist,
that's for sure. I have no objection to the twists
such right, it does represent some kind of change in
our standards. What has happened to our concept of beauty
and decency and morality. But Jfkin his wife Jackie, they
(32:52):
embraced the twist, although at first they tried to hide
their twisting from the public, worried that the twist was
not quite presidential. In February of nineteen sixty two, the
Washington Star newspaper reported that the First Lady and Secretary
of Defense Robert McNamara, had been seen twisting at a
White House party. This prompted White House Press Secretary Pierre
(33:13):
Salinger to immediately issue a statement, I was there until
three am, and nobody did the twist. But years later,
longtime Washington Post editor Ben Bradley confessed that indeed there
was twisting at JFK's parties. In Ben Bradley's memoir of
the Kennedy Years, he recalled one particular evening event which
(33:34):
was attended by Jackie Kennedy's sister, Princess Lee Radziwill. Yes,
Jackie Kennedy's sister was an actual princess. After dinner, Lee
Radswell put Chubby Checker's record on and gave all the
men lessons. The champagne was flowing like the Potomac River
and flood, and the President himself was opening bottle after
bottle in a manner that sent the foam flying over
(33:55):
the furniture, shouting, look at Bill, go to Walton, or
look at Benji go to me. As we practiced with
the princess. And in one of Kennedy's twist parties, Phil Graham,
the publisher of the Washington Post, actually split his pants
while doing some especially wild twisting. By this point, the
(34:22):
twist had truly permeated all of American culture, as Jim
Dawson put it in his great book about the twist
phenomenon called The Twist. Somehow, this goofy dance managed to
articulate a growing divide in the world, energizing people who
embrace the future and threatening those who would safeguard the past.
Having a teenage dance adopted by high society and subsequently
(34:44):
Middle America was only a taste of things ahead. A
new world was coming in. The Twist was a first
tentative line drawn in the sand. But of course all
those adults getting into the twist inevitably meant that for
the teens it was now time to move on. That's
how most fads die. When the squares start to get
into it, the hipsters get out. I like to make
(35:06):
Mr Calle from the Alta Maria dam Studios. Everyone's talking
about the Twist to swift the world, but we don't
know how to do it yet. Perhaps you can remedy
this exactly. There are about four elements that enter into
the twist movement, the first one being standing with your
feet approximately twelve inches apart and holding your arms up apart,
and then just moving it hips from one side to
the other. In May nine sixty two, Billboard magazine ran
(35:28):
a story with the headline has the Twist headed trade
sees fad fading fast. Filmmaker Ron Man who made a
great documentary called Twist puts it this way. Really, what
happened was when Adulp started doing it, it then became acceptable,
and then it became uh, you know, adverse to young
(35:48):
people really didn't want to do, but dances appearents are
doing for sure. By mid nineteen sixty two, the Twist
was starting to seem pretty square, and so the kids
moved on to a host of new dances, all inspired
by the Twist, and that they were dances that you
did without touching your partner, but each one offering its
own unique variation. There was the locomotion, There was the hitchhike.
(36:27):
There was the dog the dog plus, there was the Bugaloo,
the jerk, the monkey, the swim, and so many more.
Cameo Parkway Records, for their part, helped popularize a few
of these new dance crazes, like the Watusi makes You
(37:01):
Feel So Good. Cameo Parkway also promoted the Mashed Potato,
which broke through on the back of a hit record
by De d Sharp, the same teenager who do edit
with Chubby Checker on Slow Twisting. A single from Louisiana
(37:27):
named Chris Kenner had a hit which just listed as
many dance crazy as as possible, entitled Land of a
Thousand Dances. By late nine, the twist itself was yesterday's news,
(37:52):
and even Bobby Pickett's novelty record The Monster Mash made
that clear night up. Next, the Twist winds down, but
not without popping up again in some very unexpected and
prominent places to certify the fact that the twist fad
(38:22):
was over. Joey D's sequel to his movie hey Lett's Twist,
entitled Vivela Twist, had its name changed by the time
it hit theaters to two Tickets to Paris. By November,
Billboard observed the rise of a new dance, popularized by
a hit record from Brazil, asking is bossa Nova the
(38:42):
new Twist? Now people often refer to the twist as
having two lives, one fueled by Dick Clark in sixty
and the other by the Peppermint Lounge in two But
the truth is the Twist really had one long life.
Let me get wonky for a second. I've mentioned the
(39:04):
diffusion of innovations paradigm previously on Speed of Sound. It
describes how any new product or idea moved through society
on its way to becoming popular. As it happened, the
twist moved through different pockets of the culture in a
classic bell shaped diffusion curve follow me here, starting with
the African American kids dancing the Hank Ballard's record at
(39:26):
dances and record hops in then spreading to the kids
in Baltimore who danced it on the Buddy Dean Show,
and then busting out to the entire teen population after
Dick Clark put Chubby Checker on TV in nineteen sixty
The twist eventually won over the jet setters, who danced
it at the Peppermin Lounge and made it safe for
grown ups across the world. And finally there were the laggards,
(39:50):
still twisting after everyone else had moved on. Actually, the
most famous labrat of them all was JFK himself, who
clearly was too distracted by pressing matters like the Cuban
missile crisis to realize that the twist fad had faded.
In May of nineteen sixty three, Jackie Kennedy through JFK
a forty six birthday party on the presidential yacht, the Sequoia.
(40:13):
According to Washington Post editor Ben Bradley, who was aboard
the yacht that night. Kennedy had not yet learned that
the Twist was passe, and kept calling for more Chubby
Checker every time the three piece combo played anything else.
Jackie Kennedy, who had an impeccable sense of what was
in and what was out, is said to have found
the entire experience cringe worthy. The Twist nowadays, Time magazine
(40:38):
declared as for Chubby Checker, he kept on having hits
for a while, but not with Twist records. In late
nineteen sixty two, for instance, he hit big with limbo Rock,
which has gone down as a staple of kids birthday
parties until this day. Gon Do Limbo Rock all around
(41:03):
the limb. The Limbo Rock was Chevy Checker's last top
ten record. He hung around the lower reaches of the
top forty for the next year or so by jumping
on the folk music bandwagon of all things, releasing songs
like Hooka toukaa Tockama so Okacama. But by early nineteen
(41:28):
sixty four, with the arrival of the Beatles, the hits
dried up for Chevy Checker. Ironically, one of the beatles
biggest hits in that early first flush of American Beatlemania
was their version of Twist and Shout, and that song
(41:49):
even had a second life when it was used in
a classic scene in the Night six film Ferris Bueller's
Day Off. By the Way, on their first trip to
America in February of nineteen sixty four, the Beatles even
visited the Peppermint Lounge, the original one in New York
and the one in Miami. In New York, Ringo got
up and did the twist. In Miami, the Beatles saw
(42:10):
Hank Ballard perform and even got to meet him now.
Although he wasn't at the top of the charts any
longer by nineteen sixty four, Chevy Checker, as a result
of his constant TV appearances over the years, was a
huge worldwide star. In April of nineteen sixty four, just
as the Beatles Twist and Shout was peaking on the
US chart, Chebby Checker married Katarina Latters, a Dutch model
(42:35):
who was nineteen sixty two's Miss World. Incidentally, they're still
married to this day. The hits may have been in
the past, but let's face it, Chevy Checker had a
pretty good run. While it lasted Jim Dawson, in his
book The Twist, notes that the general consensus is that
he was a one hit wonder whose one hit was
(42:56):
so stupendously popular that it lasted ten years. But that
really sells Chubby Checker short. In a little over three years,
he scored twenty one top forty hits, with seven of
them landing in the top ten, and he made it
to number one three times, twice with a Twist, but
also with Pony Time and The Chubby Checker returned to
(43:19):
the top twenty on the pop chart when he joined
forces with rap pioneers The Fat Boys, releasing a twist
rap hybrid record called The Twist Yo Twist Checker Twist.
(43:48):
In recent years, Chubby Checker has made headlines by demanding
that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland
erect a statue of him in its courtyard. His recording
of The Twist, he argues, cha change the culture forever.
He's not wrong, even so, Chebby Checker has never been
elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and
this fact irks him, especially since Hank Ballard was elected
(44:11):
in While it's not a slam dunk, I think you
can make a case for Chevy Checkers inclusion in the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was the catalyst
for a lasting revolution in pop music and in the
overall culture. He had a lot of hit records, including
The Twist, which Billboard to this day lists as the
biggest hit of all time on the Hot One chart,
(44:35):
and it's the only record to go to number one
in two different chart runs. Plus he was the biggest
rock and roll star in the world for a time.
On the other hand, he did put out a lot
of schlock, and his records were largely derivative anyway. In
two thousand and eighteen, as a kind of consolation prize,
Chevy Checkers recording of The Twist became the first hit
(44:55):
single inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fames
Singles category. I guess they thought that was easier than
erecting the statue. As for Chubby's label, Cameo Parkway Records,
they were dealt a crushing blow when Dick Clark moved
American Bandstand to Los Angeles in nineteen sixty four. Denied
easy access to their most powerful source of promotion, the
(45:16):
label went bankrupt in nineteen sixty seven by the end,
Cameo Parkway's original creative team of Calman and David pell
had already departed, and the labels releases began to credit
younger Philadelphia musicians, people who would return Philadelphia to the
top of the music world in the nineteen seventies, including
Kenny Gamble, who wrote one of the last great Cameo
(45:39):
Parkway hits, a dance craze record called One by Candy
and the Kissings. Cameo Parkways catalog was bought by Alan Klein,
(45:59):
who a couple of years later became the Beatles manager. Inexplicably,
his company Abco kept the Cameo Parkway titles out of
circulation for nearly thirty years, missing the height of the
CD reissues boom in the nineties and causing Chubby Checker
to have to re record his hits, including the Twist,
in order to make them available to the public. So
(46:20):
if you're perusing the Internet looking for Chubby Checker music,
be very careful that you're finding the original recordings. As
for Hank Ballard, his hit making days declined after but
he did make one more appearance in the top fifteen
on the R and B chart in nineteen when James Brown,
the biggest star on King Records, produced Hank on how
(46:43):
You're Gonna get respect when you haven't cut your process yet, Brothers.
Hank Ballard made a few more records over the years
for a variety of labels, but nothing that's stuck, and
(47:07):
in ninety five, in order to pay off a twenty
five thousand dollar debt, he sold his songwriter rights to
The Twist to none other than Morris Levy, making Morris
Leavy the owner of both The Twist and the peppermin
Twist for a time. A few years later, Hank Ballard
won those rights back in a complex court case based
around the fact that Hank had copyrighted the original demo
(47:30):
of The Twist that he made for VJ Records in Night,
prior to King Records copyrighting their version of the song.
Hank Ballard died in two thousand and three, but in
the final years of his life he was once again
earning money from his biggest song. As for Joey d
he and the Starlighters left their residency at the Peppermint
Lounge after thirteen months, and that was just a couple
(47:51):
of months after the jet Setters started descending on the club.
He spent the next few years earning big money doing
live shows across the globe, and during one in Sweden
in nineteen sixty three, he even had the honor of
sharing a bill with the Beatles, who were his opening act.
Over the years, a veritable who's who of legendary performers
were members of the Starlighters, including Felix Cavaliery and Eddie Briggotti,
(48:16):
the songwriting powerhouse who formed the core of the legendary
group The Rascals. The actor Joe Pesci played guitar in
the Starlighters for a while, as did a left handed
guitarist named Jimmy Hendrix. Joey d remembers Hendrix auditioned him
in my house and Jimmy played maybe thirty seconds and
I said, Wow, You're you're fabulous man. So he got
(48:37):
the gig. For its part, the Peppermin Lounge continued on
for a couple of years after the twist craze died down.
It turned out that dancing the rock and roll had
its own lasting appeal, regardless of what the hottest dance
was at any given moment, But in nineteen sixty the
club owners fear that too much public attention would lead
to scrutiny from the authorities. Proved to be warranted when
(49:01):
the FBI discovered the identities of the true owners of
the Peppermint Lounge mafia chieved in Johnny Biello and his associates.
They revoked the club's liquor license and the pep Lounge
closed by the end of the year. But the Peppermint
Lounge proved to be the template for all the rock
and roll clubs that came afterward, From the Whiskey Ago
Go On the Sunset Strip in l A to New
(49:22):
York Studio fifty four. By five, there were five thousand
discothecs in the US, and all those dances that followed
the Twist to the dance floor, the Holly Gully, the Swim,
and the rest, they eventually gave way to something more
free form. As one of the original American bands, Dan Dancers,
Betty Roman Teeney told filmmaker Ron Man in his documentary
(49:43):
The Twist, the rules were broken, and it's okay, guys,
nobody's gonna stop us now because we're ruled like doing
our own thing, and you know, we're we're out there
and there's no going back now. Touch dancing wouldn't return
to popularity on the dance floor until the Hustle in
the mid seventies. Well, no one has written more eloquently
(50:06):
about the twist impact than the legendary African American author
and activist the late Eldridge Cleaver, who saw the Twist
as the opening salvo of a cultural reckoning. So I'll
let him tell you in his own voice and his
own words, reading from his classic book of essays, Soul
on Ice, the Twist, superseding the hula hoop, burst upon
(50:27):
the scene like a nuclear explosion, sending its fall out
of rhythm into the minds and bodies of the people.
The Twist was a guided missile launched from the ghetto
into the very heart of suburbia. The Twist succeeded as politics, religion,
and law can never do, in writing in the heart
and soul what the Supreme Court could only write on
(50:51):
the books. The Twist was a form of therapy for
a convalescing nation. Eldridge Clever reviewed the Twist as the
means by which White America shook off the shackles of
the stultifying conformist nine fifties, rising pitifully, though gamely about
the floor, feeling exhilarating and soothing, new sensations released from
(51:14):
some unknown prison in which their bodies had been encased,
a sense of freedom they had never known before, a
feeling of communication with some mystical root source of life
and vigor. As the rest of the nineteen sixties unfolded,
new freedoms were declared, the sexual revolution, the drug culture,
(51:35):
the women's movement. There was a shaking off of taboos,
a questioning of all forms of authority. And the big
bang that set off this cultural chain reaction was a
little dance called the Twist. Coming up on the next
(51:59):
Speed of Sounds, the pulsating, polarizing nightlife that defined a
decade of decadence and spawned some seriously stellar music. Join
us as we deep dive into the rise and fall
of seventies disco. If you want to take a deeper
dive into the artists and songs you just heard, check
out our curated playlist at the Speed of Sound page
(52:20):
on the I Heart app. Until next time, you can
find 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
(52:43):
Sound would like to extend a big thanks to filmmaker
Ron Man for his permission to use excerpts from his
sensational documentary Twist. I highly recommend 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
(53:06):
out the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Speed of Sound is a production of I Heart Radio.
The nineteen fifties shifted into the swinging sixties with more
of a swivel and a twist. By the dawn of
the decade, the song that launched a dance graze had
blossomed into a full fledged cultural revolution. I'm Steve Greenberg,
(00:23):
and we're about to tackle the second half of the
story behind the dance that changed history on this episode
of Speed of Sound. In a bar called the Peppermint
Lounge opened to New York City. It was located on
(00:43):
forty Street between six and Seventh Avenue, right in the
heart of the theater district, but it definitely did not
draw a theater going crowd. The regulars at the Peppermint
Lounge were more likely to be bikers, sailors, prostitutes, and
teenagers from the suburbs who were drawn to Manhattan to
take advantage of New York's lower drinking age. In short,
(01:05):
the Peppermint Lounge was your classic dive bar. It was
also a mafia front. While the club's liquor license listed
the owner as Ralph SAgs, a retired New York Police captain,
the real owner was Johnny Biello, who was a coppo
in the Geno vic crime family. Biello earned his stripes
under such mob legends as Frank Costello, Lucky Luciano, and
(01:28):
Dutch Schultz. For Johnny Biello, the Peppermint Lounge was a
place to run his gambling and loan sharking operations out
of As such, it was best for the Peppermint Lounge
to stay under the radar. The club didn't even have
a telephone. That way, the Feds had no phone they
could tap. Make no mistake, The Peppermint Lounge was one
(01:48):
tough joint. The bouncers were all professional wrestlers, including guys
like Lou Albano later known as Captain Lou and Lenny
the Bull Montana, who in V two played the gangster
Luca Brazzi in the movie The Godfather. Was this that
scilic message that means Luca Brassi sleeps with the fishes.
(02:08):
The Peppermin Lounge had a long barn. At the end
of that bar, there was a bandstand and a tiny
dance floor. Bar bands would play rhythm and blues while
the regulars got drunk. In September of nineteen sixty, a
band from New Jersey was hired to play three nights
worth of shows at the club. The name of the
band was the star Lighters. Their leader was a saxophone
(02:31):
player named joe Denny Kola, known professionally as Joey D.
Let's let Joey D tell you their story himself. Well,
I was very fortunate to be born in Passaic, New Jersey,
and I went to the same high school the Charells
went to, and they actually got me my first record
contract with Stepter Records. And the owner of the company
(02:53):
was also from Passaic, New Jersey, Florence Greenberg. And this
this is how it all started. Back then in fifties,
I was actually playing saxophone and singing background while the
records they made for Scepter went nowhere. Joey D and
the Starlighters were building a reputation as a great live band.
We became New Jersey's number one band. And how we
(03:17):
did that was we worked at a place called the
Irvington House right off the Jersey Parkway, and while we
were there, we would back up the stars that would
come in, i e. Frankie Avalon, Connie Francis, Bobby Rydell Fabian,
all of these people came in and my band was
that good that we backed up all of these superstars,
(03:39):
And I said, man, one of these days, I'm gonna
be one of you guys. And I told that Bobby
ray Del and he said, Joey, you guys are really good.
I think you're gonna make it. One night in September
of nineteen sixty, the Starlighters were playing a gig when
fate intervened and then I will also worked at the
club being Lodi, New Jersey, Kolala Varry's. And while we
(03:59):
were there, we had this agent stopping. He saw all
the cars in the in the parking lot was on
Root forty six in Lodai, and he stopped and see
what all the commotion was about. So he came in.
His name was Don Davis, and he was an agent
from New York City and he saw the band that
during my break he called me over and said who
he was, and he had a gig in New York City.
(04:20):
Would we be interested in New York City's The dream
of all brands is from New Jersey anyway, and I said,
of course. So he booked us for three days at
the Peppermint Lounge. The Starlighters arrived at the Peppermint Lounge
for their three night gig in October of nineteen sixty,
just as Chevy Checkers recording of The Twist was peaking
on the charts, but Joey d was already familiar with
(04:43):
Hank Ballard's version of the song. I had the first
integrated band in New Jersey to my knowledge, and we
had a guy in the group called Rogers Freeman who
was my lead vocalists, along with David Burgotti, who would
later become one of the young rascals. So Rob just
said there's a group playing at Ben's Cotton Club in Newark,
(05:04):
New Jersey named Pearl Reeves Band, and I said, well,
let's go check them out. So David not were the
only white people in to join, and that wasn't the
only time, because we loved R and B music. So
during the Pearl Reeves is break, they were playing uh
the jukebox and I see these kids doing this real
(05:26):
cool dance, and I go up to the jukebox to
see what the dance, what the song was, and it
was Hank Ballot in the midnighters, the Twist. So I said,
this is great, man, we gotta put this as part
of our show. I bought the record, brought it to
the Starlighters, and it became the most popular part of
our show. The three night gig went so well that
(05:47):
the club asked Joey d and the Starlighters to stay
on as the house band. Well, the three Day Gig
became thirteen months as a house band. Pretty soon, the
Peppermint Lounge started to attract a lot of kids from
New Jersey who had heard that the star Lighters were
in residence there, and those kids went wild every night
when the band played the Twist. The tiny dance floor
(06:10):
at the Peppermint Lounge was packed night after night with
New Jersey teenagers all doing that dance. Nearly a year
into the Starlighter's residence at the Peppermint Lounge, a man
named Lee Rattner, who was an associate of Johnny Biello,
came to the Peppermint Lounge with his girlfriend, Grace Palmer.
Lee spent most of that night in the back room
(06:31):
talking business with Johnny Biello, while Grace sat at the
bar taking in the scene. When Lee and Johnny finally
concluded their business, Lee came out to the bar and
found his girlfriend sitting there. Transfixed by the dancing, wanting
to join in. Even this inspired Lee Rattner to try
to get an item placed in the gossip pages about
the scene at the Peppermint Lounge. He managed to reach
(06:52):
Liz Smith, who would eventually go on to become a
legendary gossip columnist herself, but who at that point was
an assistant to Charlie Knickerbocker, the very influential columnist for
the New York Journal American, whose gossip column was syndicated
in newspapers across America. The name Charlie Knickerbocker was of
(07:13):
course a pseudonym. His real name was Igor Cassini, and
he was the brother of the famous fashion designer Oleg Cassini,
who designed First Lady Jackie Kennedy's clothes and who the
First Lady referred to as Secretary of Style. Charlie Knickerbocker's
column specialized in covering what was known back then as
(07:33):
cafe society, the comings and goings of New York's upper crust.
It was Charlie Knickerbocker who named that crowd the jet set.
In fact, anyway, on September twenty one, Charlie Knickerbocker ran
an item in his column stating that Prince Obolenski, a
descendant of Russian royalty and a well known jet setter,
(07:55):
was sited at New York's chic Peppermint Lounge doing the twist.
Nick Corbaco wrote, the twist is the new teenage dance craze,
but you don't have to be a teenager to do
the twist. Of course, by this point, the twist was
far from new. Chubby Checker's record was more than a
year old. But let's put that aside and focus on
the fact that Prince Obolensky had never actually been to
(08:17):
the Peppermint Lounge. The whole item was fabricated. Nonetheless, the
story took on a life of its own. Other society
columnists also started mentioning the Peppermint Lounge, and soon enough,
actual jet setters and celebrities began to show up at
the club, anxious not to miss out on the action.
Within weeks, the Peppermint Lounge was crawling with celebrities Marilyn Monroe,
(08:41):
Maurice Chevalier, Judy Garland, Noel Coward, Shirley McClain, Truman, Capodi,
Greta Garbo, Tennessee Williams, and so many more of their
ilk started to turn the Peppermint Lounge into their clubhouse,
abandoning their usual haunts like El Morocco or the Store Club,
and crowd onto the tiny dance floor along with the
(09:02):
bikers and the teenagers from New Jersey. The crowd soon
became out of control, with people lined up around the
block trying to get in night after night. Journalist Tom
Wolfe noted everybody was there and behindmost were laying fives, tens,
and twenty dollar bills on cops, doormen, and a couple
of sets of Major d's to get within sight of
(09:22):
the bandstand and the dance floor the size of somebody's kitchen.
Then the national media began to take notice, adding to
the frenzy. To the regulars of the Peppermint, the twist
is not new. But then society discoverned, and almost overnight,
the Rolls Royce set again. The mingle that the motorcycle
set so now they rub elbows and the mob that
(09:43):
lines up every night outside the Peppermint Lounge. The mink
stole has become as common as the bulky sweater and
the black leather jacket. The visitors to the Peppermint Lounge
now include such notables as Mrs Jane Smith, a sister
of the President of the United States and the United
States Senator Jacob Jackett, and sometimes even highest social standing.
You can't get you in as money. As a thousand
(10:04):
customers are turned away every night. The streets around the
Peppermint Lounge were closed off to traffic. Police barricades were
set up, and mounted police were brought in to keep
the crowds waiting outside from spilling out from the sidewalk.
Major celebrities like Dick Clark and even Chubby Checker himself
were forced to endure the long lines outside in order
(10:25):
to gain entrance. As Joey d recalled, well, it was
a nice, beautiful mix in the beginning until about two
weeks later, because now it's all about the money, as
you know, and the society people carried a lot of weight,
and they were famous people, so of course they got
to the front of the line, and the young kids
(10:45):
and all got jumped at the side, which was kind
of sad because they were my real audience, and they
were the kids that catered to, and they were the
ones who who made the Peppermint Lounge what it was.
What was Truly remarkable about this whole scene was that
adults had never shown the slightest interest in rock and
roll before, but now, all of a sudden, they couldn't
(11:08):
get enough of the Twist. Remember, in its first go
round a year earlier, adults had condemned the twist as lewd.
New York's Roseland Ballroom banned it entirely, But now the
grown ups were leading the charge. A year after the
twist cross racial barriers in Baltimore and Philadelphia, it was
now crossing generational barriers in New York and even class barriers.
(11:33):
Isn't it the thing to do? And I think so, yes,
it really is the thing to do. What would be
some of the out things to do? I guess the
only comment I could make on that is not to
do it would be out. I mean, if you don't
do it, you're just considered out. I don't know if
anyone that doesn't do it. At the moment, the Arthur
Murray dance studios across the country saw a massive increase
(11:56):
in enrollment as they promised to teach the Twist in
its easy lessons. According to one dance instructor, the twist
allows a lot more individualism than most popular dances. People
are getting fed up with being automatons, whether it's on
the factory production line or a dance floor, And according
(12:16):
to Newsweek, the Twist, a rock and roll comedy of arrows,
has suddenly turned the Peppermint Lounge, a run of the
Gin Mill, into a melting pot for socialites, sailors, and salesman.
But not everyone loved the idea of adults becoming infatuated
with the Twist. The New York Times was particularly harsh.
(12:37):
Arthur Gelb, who wrote for the paper about culture, sneered,
cafe society hasn't gone slumming with such energy since It's
four Ways into Harlem in the twenties, and the Times
education writer lamented, instead of youth growing up, adults are
sliding down. Of course, this bright media spotlight was entirely
(12:58):
counter to the original purpose of the Peppermint Lounge, which
was to avoid attention so it could serve as a
front for mob activity. The owners quickly adapted, however, embracing
the success, and eventually they opened Peppermint lounges and other
cities around the world. Now, the Twist frenzy was definitely
a signal that America was changing rapidly. The baby boomers
(13:20):
were bringing down the average age of the US population.
There was a young, charismatic president in Washington, and the
jet set was for the very first time taking its
cues from youth culture, notably rock and roll. After ignoring
an even condemning rock and roll for the first seven
years of its existence on the national stage, adults now
(13:41):
wanted in on the action, and the twist was an
easy way for adults to glom onto youth culture. It
was so simple to learn, anyone could do it. You
actually have to wonder what the Arthur Murray dance studios
even taught in those six lessons. Anyway, soon the great
thought leaders of the establishman began to weigh in on
(14:01):
the phenomenon. One professor referred to the twist as valid
manifestation of the age of anxiety and outward manifestation of
the anguish, frustration and uncertainty of the nineteen sixties, an
effort to release some of the tension which, if suppreston buried,
could war and destroy. And the acclaimed media guru Marshall
(14:22):
McLuhan had this to say, I don't mindself think of
it as a as a sort of damns. It looks
very very clean, very casual like conversation without words, the
sort of highly expressive conversational style without words. It didn't
take long for the folks at Cameo Parkway Records to
(14:42):
realize that the Twist still had a lot of life
left in it, and since now it was a completely
different audience that was dancing the Twist, they didn't see
the need to record a new Twist song to cash
in on the craze. They just re released Chubby Checkers
nineteen sixty recording of The Twist and started promoting it
again to radio stations. For his part, Chubby Checker picked
(15:03):
up the pace of his TV appearances, finally getting a
booking to perform The Twist on The Ed Sullivan Show
in late October. From there, it was a steady climb
back up the charts, and by the beginning of nineteen two,
the Twist found itself once again in the number one position,
this time holding down the top slot for two weeks,
(15:24):
which is one week more than it had the first
time around. It would certainly have stayed at the top longer,
but this time it had competition up next the peppermin
(15:44):
Lounge inspires a number one record that gives the Twist
craze a whole new spin and flavor. All the media
attention surrounding the Peppermint Lounge had put a bright spotlight
on Joey D and the Starlighters, and it wasn't long
(16:06):
before record companies were approaching the band to record their
own Twist record. Here's Joey D. So I had three
record companies come in and Vye for our contract signing.
I had the Roulette Records. I had Atlantic Records and
Capitol Records. I talked to all three. I talked toometer
it again from Atlantic, and I told Nick Benett from
(16:26):
Capitol and Mars Levy from Roulette Records, and I said,
whoever sciences has to have a recording out by us
within two to three weeks. And Atlantic said they couldn't
do it, and Capital said they couldn't do it, and
Maurice Levy said, I'll haven't done in two weeks, and
so we opted for Maurice Levy, not knowing he was
connected with the Genovese family and the mob and all
(16:50):
the other stuff which I learned later. We've mentioned Morris
Levy previously on Speed of sound in our episode about
sugar Hill Records, but his tentacles reached a US rock
and rolls first four decades. Like Johnny Biello, Morris Levy
was close with the Genovese crime family, although as a
Jew he couldn't formally be a member, and like Johnny Biello,
(17:12):
he was involved in the nightclub business as the owner
of Birdland, the famed jazz club on Broadway. Morris Levy
owned a whole slew of record labels and publishing companies,
and was quite fond of listing his own name as
the composer on songs he released, like the classic Frankie
Lyman hit why Do Fools Fall in Love? What Fools?
(17:46):
Needless to say, Morris Levy did not in reality composed
of that song or any other. Morris Levy also managed
the early rock and roll DJ Allen Freed, and for
a while he tried to copyright the phrase rock and
roll l itself, shaking down small labels who used the
term on their records, until finally a judge ruled that
(18:06):
the phrase rock and roll was in the public domain.
Morris Levy was certainly a man not to be messed with,
as Joey d. Recalled. There was another guy reluctant to
sign a contract, so Morris had one of his boys
hang him out of a night and story window Buddy
Ankles until he acquiesced. When he pulled them up, he said, okay,
(18:27):
and where do I sign? Of course he signed. In
late nine, Morris Levy's label, Roulette Records, was on the
verge of bankruptcy, so it was in his best interest
to get a record by Joey Dean. The Starlighter is
released quick before the whole twist Fat hit the wall first,
though Morris Levy insisted on some changes to the group.
(18:48):
I knew I was not a lead singer, and I
had a band. I had a great rock and roll band,
but I needed some great singers. So I got Rogers
Freeman from a group called the Vibrant Tones. I got
the musicians that were integrated into the band, and it
meant it meant a lot to me. And I was
told by by Mars Levy, and he was wasn't very kind,
(19:11):
and in his assessment of my group, he didn't find
that I had the keyboardists and the drummer that they
were black Willie Davis and Carlton Lattimore, but he didn't
like the idea Rogers Freeman being out front. He said,
you gotta get rid of the name. And I said,
what do you mean? He says, if you want the contract,
(19:31):
you gotta get rid of them. And one of my
biggest regrets is I acquiesced. And that's how I got
Larry Venerie in the group, because he wanted three little
Italian white guys out front, and that's what we did.
Morris Levy put Joey D together with the labels musical
director Henry Glover. Does that name sound familiar? A few
years earlier, you may recall from our previous episode, Henry
(19:54):
Glover was the musical director at King Records, and he
produced Hank Ballard's original version of the tw Wist. He's
also the man who insisted that the Twist remained on
the B side of that record and that the A
side be a different song, one that he composed. Well. Now,
Henry Glover was at Roulette Records and he wasn't about
to be wrong about the Twist a second time. He
(20:16):
showed up at the session with Joey D determined to
write a hit, and he made the bold decision that
Joey D's twist record should sound nothing at all like
the Hank Ballard song, and so he came up with
a completely different beat. He also came up with a
name for the song, the Peppermint Twist, and lyrics that
referenced the phenomenon that was happening specifically at the Peppermint Lounge. Well,
(20:45):
the Pepperminsist is me. Things were moving fast for Joey
D and the Starlighters at this point, so when it
came time to record the song, they did it on
a sound stage where Joey D was starring in a
quickie twist theme be called Hey, Let's Twist. Now. Joey
D wasn't the lead singer of the Starlighters, he was
(21:06):
the saxophonist. The lead singer at this point was Dave Brigotti,
who would eventually become part of the group The Young Rascals.
But Henry Glover didn't like the way Dave Bragotti sounded
on the song, and he asked Joey D to give
it a try. And I said, Henry, I'm a background
singing and I played saxophone. I'm not a lead singer.
But he said give it a try. So I went
(21:27):
in the studio with the headset on. The band started
playing the music and I sang, I got a new dance,
and he go and before I even finished the first line,
he said, that's what I want, and I became the
lead singer that Joey deana Starlighters. Not only was the
beat of Peppermin Twist different from the beat of the Twist,
but the actual dance that the Starlighters did on stage
(21:48):
was a little different too. Joey D's twist incorporated circular
arm motions in front of the body and also a
lot of pulling up your legs and jumping into the air,
all while twisting your pelvis, of course. In late November,
(22:09):
just one week after Chubby Checkers Twist reappeared on the
Billboard Hot one hundred, the Pepperman Twist debuted as well.
The two records raced each other up the chart, and
while Chubby Checker got to the top first after two weeks,
Joey D replaced him at number one, and he stayed
there for three weeks. However, Joey De learned that having
a number one record with the Pepperman Twist on Morris
(22:32):
Levy's label wouldn't be the financial bonanza he was expecting.
Mars took me aside and he said, listen, you don't
want any problems for me, And I said, no, I don't.
He said, you're gonna make money performing. That's where you're
gonna make your money. I'm making the money with the records.
That's my business. And what was I to say? So?
(22:52):
I said, okay, And sure enough here it is, almost
sixty years later, I'm still making money performing. It's so
he could you know that part of the deal worked out,
but the recording and the woryalty part did not work
out well for me. Given the Twist frenzy, it was
inevitable that a delusion of Twist records would flood the market.
(23:15):
First came Dear Lady Twist by Gary U. S. Bonds.
Then the Great Sam Cook described his own experience visiting
the Peppermint Lounge in Twist in the Night Away. Let
(23:36):
me tell you about the place to someone were up
but louey all the way where the people are so gay,
Twist them the night. The Isley Brothers took Twist and
Shout the song that had flopped for the top notes
in sixty and turned it into a massive hits, and
(24:03):
Chubby Checker found himself inside the top ten with yet
another twist record, Slow Twisting, this time in a duet
with a young Philadelphia singer named d D. Sharp. On
(24:26):
On and on it went, with hundreds of twist records
making it to the stores, most of which were putrid
and most of which flopped. Some of these were original
twist songs, and some were just twist versions of songs
that had already existed, like Chubby Checker's remarkable twist version
of Hava Naguila. One of the most awful twist records
(24:54):
was by the well known middlebrow poet Rod McEwen, who
put out a song with a wings worthy title, the
Oliver Twisty Oliver Oliver Oliver Twist. Even Frank Sinatra got
(25:16):
aboard the twist bandwagon. With everybody's twisting, all the kids
were twisted. It didn't take long Big Father, grown upsw
trying it, Who's who was buying it? And I guess
inevitably the Chipmunks released the Alvin Twist. Some adults were holdouts, however,
(25:48):
most notably the great nat King Cole, who took to
the Dinah Shore TV show to sing I won't twist, Well,
they have a new dance out, not I plan to resist,
I will twist. There were even Chubby Checker rip off
(26:11):
artists with ridiculous names like Chunky Checkmate and Pudgy part Cheesy,
but they were thankfully unsuccessful. All in all, twenty three
different singles with the word twist in their title made
the top forty between nineteen sixty and nineteen sixty two.
And by the way, the word twisting was never spelled
(26:33):
with the letter G at the end, always an apostrophe.
Now through it all, the frenzy at the Peppermint Lounge
continued unabated. One night, Joey d recalled a star was
unexpectedly born on the club stage. One evening, we had
the three little young girls come in. They were teenagers, sixteen, seventeen,
(26:53):
and they actually asked me for an opportunity to sing
with the group. And this is during our age when
the place was really booming, and these girls came up
on stage and I said, what the heck, Charrels gave
me an opportunity, so let me give these girls a chance.
But they got up and did though what I say,
(27:13):
Ray Charles is recording and toward a house down and
I immediately hired them, and they went on to become
the Ronetts and Rock and Rose Hall of Fame as
well the Three Girls. The Peppermin Lounge. By this point
had become so popular and crowded that the society folk
needed to find other clubs where they could actually get in.
The best of these, by far, was a club up
(27:35):
in Harlem called Smalls Paradise, which was owned at the
time by basketball star Wilt Chamberlain. When the jet Setters
descended on the club, Wilt the Stilt increased the cover charge,
which did nothing to stop the limousines from snaking around
the walk. The star attractions at Smallest Paradise were mam
Aloo Parks and the park Attes, the house dancers, who
(27:56):
had been major dance stars since the days of the
Lyndy and the How Bandit. Smallest Paradise was led by
saxophonist King Curtis, who played on an endless string of
classic R and B records. In the fifties, when Smalls
became hot with the twisting jet Setters, King Curtis signed
a record deal with Bobby Robinson's Harlem based in Joy
Records and had a big hit with an instrumental called
(28:19):
Soul Twist. By the way, Besides being a great record,
Soul Twist also holds the distinction of being the first
hit record with the word soul in its title, as
that word was just starting to be used to describe
(28:41):
the newest wave of R and B. Now, it didn't
take long for twist exploitation products to start hitting the market.
The Joey D film Haylett's Twist that he was filming
in October, well that was in theaters and time for Christmas.
I mean, we've had on something big, Joey, not just
a new dance, but a new sound, a new B
that's fund the one that hits will happen me, Okay,
(29:03):
So you tell them we're gonna quit school for the Twist,
And for his part, Chubby Checkers starting two feature length
twist movies, Don't Knock the Twist and Twist around the Clock. Baby.
Their dance got a name. Can you see what I'm doing?
You're twisting yourself in a nervous breakdown. That's it, brother, twist.
(29:24):
If you're fruz, easily stay away. Chubby Checker and Joey
D each even made their own twist instructional records. Hi
again back, like I promised, We're ready to do some
more twisting. Turned to the helpful hint section of the
instruction booklet Find it good. Now, those of you who
(29:45):
have partners stand face to face with enough space between
you so you can swing your arms without bruising each other.
By the way, my mom used to tell this story
about how my older brother and his friends in the
neighborhood when they were really little, used to line up
in front of the TV every afternoon to take twist
lessons from Chubby Checker. I always assumed that she was
misremembering and that maybe they did this once. However, Mom
(30:08):
was right. It turns out that for a while, Chubby
Checker hosted these five minute daily twist instruction shows on
TV sponsored by Duncan Heinz Fudge Mix. But I digress.
Of course, there was endless twist merchandise for sale. There
were twist shoes, twist hats, twist skirts, and many of
these items were endorsed by Chubby Checker himself, whose manager
(30:30):
Henry Colt, took out an ad in The New York
Times letting advertisers know that Chubby was for sale. Manufacturers
attention a new nationwide name to pre sell your product.
The Twist with Chubby Checker, King of the Twist, who
created the greatest nationwide dancing years license is available. Big
names mean big business, and just about every TV show
(30:53):
on the air felt obligated to work the twist into
at least one episode. For instance, on The Dick Van
Dyke Show, the suburban housewife Laura Petrie played by Mary
Tyler Moore twisted in her living room. Everybody starting twistle, Everybody,
you'll begin to swizzle twistle, don't know? Sometimes I do.
(31:25):
And on the flint Stones, everybody got down to the
twist in the prehistoric town of Bedrock. Well will twist
around the clock to night and twist twitch Rock is
going to rule with all his mind. Meanwhile, twist Mania
began to go international. It was brought to France by
(31:46):
the Broadway cast of West Side Story, who traveled to
Paris for a limited run of the show. Carrying with
them the latest Twist records. They headed straight to the
chic Parisian nightclubs Share Regine, where they handed their Twist
records to the DJ and set the stage for a
full fledged Twist craze in France. In fact, Johnny Halliday,
(32:07):
the singer known as the French Elvis, spent seven weeks
at number one in France at the end of nine
with his version of Let's twist against its default, The
twist even found its way into the Kennedy White House. Now.
(32:31):
JFK's predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower was no fan of the twist,
that's for sure. I have no objection to the twists
such right, it does represent some kind of change in
our standards. What has happened to our concept of beauty
and decency and morality. But Jfkin his wife Jackie, they
(32:52):
embraced the twist, although at first they tried to hide
their twisting from the public, worried that the twist was
not quite presidential. In February of nineteen sixty two, the
Washington Star newspaper reported that the First Lady and Secretary
of Defense Robert McNamara, had been seen twisting at a
White House party. This prompted White House Press Secretary Pierre
(33:13):
Salinger to immediately issue a statement, I was there until
three am, and nobody did the twist. But years later,
longtime Washington Post editor Ben Bradley confessed that indeed there
was twisting at JFK's parties. In Ben Bradley's memoir of
the Kennedy Years, he recalled one particular evening event which
(33:34):
was attended by Jackie Kennedy's sister, Princess Lee Radziwill. Yes,
Jackie Kennedy's sister was an actual princess. After dinner, Lee
Radswell put Chubby Checker's record on and gave all the
men lessons. The champagne was flowing like the Potomac River
and flood, and the President himself was opening bottle after
bottle in a manner that sent the foam flying over
(33:55):
the furniture, shouting, look at Bill, go to Walton, or
look at Benji go to me. As we practiced with
the princess. And in one of Kennedy's twist parties, Phil Graham,
the publisher of the Washington Post, actually split his pants
while doing some especially wild twisting. By this point, the
(34:22):
twist had truly permeated all of American culture, as Jim
Dawson put it in his great book about the twist
phenomenon called The Twist. Somehow, this goofy dance managed to
articulate a growing divide in the world, energizing people who
embrace the future and threatening those who would safeguard the past.
Having a teenage dance adopted by high society and subsequently
(34:44):
Middle America was only a taste of things ahead. A
new world was coming in. The Twist was a first
tentative line drawn in the sand. But of course all
those adults getting into the twist inevitably meant that for
the teens it was now time to move on. That's
how most fads die. When the squares start to get
into it, the hipsters get out. I like to make
(35:06):
Mr Calle from the Alta Maria dam Studios. Everyone's talking
about the Twist to swift the world, but we don't
know how to do it yet. Perhaps you can remedy
this exactly. There are about four elements that enter into
the twist movement, the first one being standing with your
feet approximately twelve inches apart and holding your arms up apart,
and then just moving it hips from one side to
the other. In May nine sixty two, Billboard magazine ran
(35:28):
a story with the headline has the Twist headed trade
sees fad fading fast. Filmmaker Ron Man who made a
great documentary called Twist puts it this way. Really, what
happened was when Adulp started doing it, it then became acceptable,
and then it became uh, you know, adverse to young
(35:48):
people really didn't want to do, but dances appearents are
doing for sure. By mid nineteen sixty two, the Twist
was starting to seem pretty square, and so the kids
moved on to a host of new dances, all inspired
by the Twist, and that they were dances that you
did without touching your partner, but each one offering its
own unique variation. There was the locomotion, There was the hitchhike.
(36:27):
There was the dog the dog plus, there was the Bugaloo,
the jerk, the monkey, the swim, and so many more.
Cameo Parkway Records, for their part, helped popularize a few
of these new dance crazes, like the Watusi makes You
(37:01):
Feel So Good. Cameo Parkway also promoted the Mashed Potato,
which broke through on the back of a hit record
by De d Sharp, the same teenager who do edit
with Chubby Checker on Slow Twisting. A single from Louisiana
(37:27):
named Chris Kenner had a hit which just listed as
many dance crazy as as possible, entitled Land of a
Thousand Dances. By late nine, the twist itself was yesterday's news,
(37:52):
and even Bobby Pickett's novelty record The Monster Mash made
that clear night up. Next, the Twist winds down, but
not without popping up again in some very unexpected and
prominent places to certify the fact that the twist fad
(38:22):
was over. Joey D's sequel to his movie hey Lett's Twist,
entitled Vivela Twist, had its name changed by the time
it hit theaters to two Tickets to Paris. By November,
Billboard observed the rise of a new dance, popularized by
a hit record from Brazil, asking is bossa Nova the
(38:42):
new Twist? Now people often refer to the twist as
having two lives, one fueled by Dick Clark in sixty
and the other by the Peppermint Lounge in two But
the truth is the Twist really had one long life.
Let me get wonky for a second. I've mentioned the
(39:04):
diffusion of innovations paradigm previously on Speed of Sound. It
describes how any new product or idea moved through society
on its way to becoming popular. As it happened, the
twist moved through different pockets of the culture in a
classic bell shaped diffusion curve follow me here, starting with
the African American kids dancing the Hank Ballard's record at
(39:26):
dances and record hops in then spreading to the kids
in Baltimore who danced it on the Buddy Dean Show,
and then busting out to the entire teen population after
Dick Clark put Chubby Checker on TV in nineteen sixty
The twist eventually won over the jet setters, who danced
it at the Peppermin Lounge and made it safe for
grown ups across the world. And finally there were the laggards,
(39:50):
still twisting after everyone else had moved on. Actually, the
most famous labrat of them all was JFK himself, who
clearly was too distracted by pressing matters like the Cuban
missile crisis to realize that the twist fad had faded.
In May of nineteen sixty three, Jackie Kennedy through JFK
a forty six birthday party on the presidential yacht, the Sequoia.
(40:13):
According to Washington Post editor Ben Bradley, who was aboard
the yacht that night. Kennedy had not yet learned that
the Twist was passe, and kept calling for more Chubby
Checker every time the three piece combo played anything else.
Jackie Kennedy, who had an impeccable sense of what was
in and what was out, is said to have found
the entire experience cringe worthy. The Twist nowadays, Time magazine
(40:38):
declared as for Chubby Checker, he kept on having hits
for a while, but not with Twist records. In late
nineteen sixty two, for instance, he hit big with limbo Rock,
which has gone down as a staple of kids birthday
parties until this day. Gon Do Limbo Rock all around
(41:03):
the limb. The Limbo Rock was Chevy Checker's last top
ten record. He hung around the lower reaches of the
top forty for the next year or so by jumping
on the folk music bandwagon of all things, releasing songs
like Hooka toukaa Tockama so Okacama. But by early nineteen
(41:28):
sixty four, with the arrival of the Beatles, the hits
dried up for Chevy Checker. Ironically, one of the beatles
biggest hits in that early first flush of American Beatlemania
was their version of Twist and Shout, and that song
(41:49):
even had a second life when it was used in
a classic scene in the Night six film Ferris Bueller's
Day Off. By the Way, on their first trip to
America in February of nineteen sixty four, the Beatles even
visited the Peppermint Lounge, the original one in New York
and the one in Miami. In New York, Ringo got
up and did the twist. In Miami, the Beatles saw
(42:10):
Hank Ballard perform and even got to meet him now.
Although he wasn't at the top of the charts any
longer by nineteen sixty four, Chevy Checker, as a result
of his constant TV appearances over the years, was a
huge worldwide star. In April of nineteen sixty four, just
as the Beatles Twist and Shout was peaking on the
US chart, Chebby Checker married Katarina Latters, a Dutch model
(42:35):
who was nineteen sixty two's Miss World. Incidentally, they're still
married to this day. The hits may have been in
the past, but let's face it, Chevy Checker had a
pretty good run. While it lasted Jim Dawson, in his
book The Twist, notes that the general consensus is that
he was a one hit wonder whose one hit was
(42:56):
so stupendously popular that it lasted ten years. But that
really sells Chubby Checker short. In a little over three years,
he scored twenty one top forty hits, with seven of
them landing in the top ten, and he made it
to number one three times, twice with a Twist, but
also with Pony Time and The Chubby Checker returned to
(43:19):
the top twenty on the pop chart when he joined
forces with rap pioneers The Fat Boys, releasing a twist
rap hybrid record called The Twist Yo Twist Checker Twist.
(43:48):
In recent years, Chubby Checker has made headlines by demanding
that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland
erect a statue of him in its courtyard. His recording
of The Twist, he argues, cha change the culture forever.
He's not wrong, even so, Chebby Checker has never been
elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and
this fact irks him, especially since Hank Ballard was elected
(44:11):
in While it's not a slam dunk, I think you
can make a case for Chevy Checkers inclusion in the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was the catalyst
for a lasting revolution in pop music and in the
overall culture. He had a lot of hit records, including
The Twist, which Billboard to this day lists as the
biggest hit of all time on the Hot One chart,
(44:35):
and it's the only record to go to number one
in two different chart runs. Plus he was the biggest
rock and roll star in the world for a time.
On the other hand, he did put out a lot
of schlock, and his records were largely derivative anyway. In
two thousand and eighteen, as a kind of consolation prize,
Chevy Checkers recording of The Twist became the first hit
(44:55):
single inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fames
Singles category. I guess they thought that was easier than
erecting the statue. As for Chubby's label, Cameo Parkway Records,
they were dealt a crushing blow when Dick Clark moved
American Bandstand to Los Angeles in nineteen sixty four. Denied
easy access to their most powerful source of promotion, the
(45:16):
label went bankrupt in nineteen sixty seven by the end,
Cameo Parkway's original creative team of Calman and David pell
had already departed, and the labels releases began to credit
younger Philadelphia musicians, people who would return Philadelphia to the
top of the music world in the nineteen seventies, including
Kenny Gamble, who wrote one of the last great Cameo
(45:39):
Parkway hits, a dance craze record called One by Candy
and the Kissings. Cameo Parkways catalog was bought by Alan Klein,
(45:59):
who a couple of years later became the Beatles manager. Inexplicably,
his company Abco kept the Cameo Parkway titles out of
circulation for nearly thirty years, missing the height of the
CD reissues boom in the nineties and causing Chubby Checker
to have to re record his hits, including the Twist,
in order to make them available to the public. So
(46:20):
if you're perusing the Internet looking for Chubby Checker music,
be very careful that you're finding the original recordings. As
for Hank Ballard, his hit making days declined after but
he did make one more appearance in the top fifteen
on the R and B chart in nineteen when James Brown,
the biggest star on King Records, produced Hank on how
(46:43):
You're Gonna get respect when you haven't cut your process yet, Brothers.
Hank Ballard made a few more records over the years
for a variety of labels, but nothing that's stuck, and
(47:07):
in ninety five, in order to pay off a twenty
five thousand dollar debt, he sold his songwriter rights to
The Twist to none other than Morris Levy, making Morris
Leavy the owner of both The Twist and the peppermin
Twist for a time. A few years later, Hank Ballard
won those rights back in a complex court case based
around the fact that Hank had copyrighted the original demo
(47:30):
of The Twist that he made for VJ Records in Night,
prior to King Records copyrighting their version of the song.
Hank Ballard died in two thousand and three, but in
the final years of his life he was once again
earning money from his biggest song. As for Joey d
he and the Starlighters left their residency at the Peppermint
Lounge after thirteen months, and that was just a couple
(47:51):
of months after the jet Setters started descending on the club.
He spent the next few years earning big money doing
live shows across the globe, and during one in Sweden
in nineteen sixty three, he even had the honor of
sharing a bill with the Beatles, who were his opening act.
Over the years, a veritable who's who of legendary performers
were members of the Starlighters, including Felix Cavaliery and Eddie Briggotti,
(48:16):
the songwriting powerhouse who formed the core of the legendary
group The Rascals. The actor Joe Pesci played guitar in
the Starlighters for a while, as did a left handed
guitarist named Jimmy Hendrix. Joey d remembers Hendrix auditioned him
in my house and Jimmy played maybe thirty seconds and
I said, Wow, You're you're fabulous man. So he got
(48:37):
the gig. For its part, the Peppermin Lounge continued on
for a couple of years after the twist craze died down.
It turned out that dancing the rock and roll had
its own lasting appeal, regardless of what the hottest dance
was at any given moment, But in nineteen sixty the
club owners fear that too much public attention would lead
to scrutiny from the authorities. Proved to be warranted when
(49:01):
the FBI discovered the identities of the true owners of
the Peppermint Lounge mafia chieved in Johnny Biello and his associates.
They revoked the club's liquor license and the pep Lounge
closed by the end of the year. But the Peppermint
Lounge proved to be the template for all the rock
and roll clubs that came afterward, From the Whiskey Ago
Go On the Sunset Strip in l A to New
(49:22):
York Studio fifty four. By five, there were five thousand
discothecs in the US, and all those dances that followed
the Twist to the dance floor, the Holly Gully, the Swim,
and the rest, they eventually gave way to something more
free form. As one of the original American bands, Dan Dancers,
Betty Roman Teeney told filmmaker Ron Man in his documentary
(49:43):
The Twist, the rules were broken, and it's okay, guys,
nobody's gonna stop us now because we're ruled like doing
our own thing, and you know, we're we're out there
and there's no going back now. Touch dancing wouldn't return
to popularity on the dance floor until the Hustle in
the mid seventies. Well, no one has written more eloquently
(50:06):
about the twist impact than the legendary African American author
and activist the late Eldridge Cleaver, who saw the Twist
as the opening salvo of a cultural reckoning. So I'll
let him tell you in his own voice and his
own words, reading from his classic book of essays, Soul
on Ice, the Twist, superseding the hula hoop, burst upon
(50:27):
the scene like a nuclear explosion, sending its fall out
of rhythm into the minds and bodies of the people.
The Twist was a guided missile launched from the ghetto
into the very heart of suburbia. The Twist succeeded as politics, religion,
and law can never do, in writing in the heart
and soul what the Supreme Court could only write on
(50:51):
the books. The Twist was a form of therapy for
a convalescing nation. Eldridge Clever reviewed the Twist as the
means by which White America shook off the shackles of
the stultifying conformist nine fifties, rising pitifully, though gamely about
the floor, feeling exhilarating and soothing, new sensations released from
(51:14):
some unknown prison in which their bodies had been encased,
a sense of freedom they had never known before, a
feeling of communication with some mystical root source of life
and vigor. As the rest of the nineteen sixties unfolded,
new freedoms were declared, the sexual revolution, the drug culture,
(51:35):
the women's movement. There was a shaking off of taboos,
a questioning of all forms of authority. And the big
bang that set off this cultural chain reaction was a
little dance called the Twist. Coming up on the next
(51:59):
Speed of Sounds, the pulsating, polarizing nightlife that defined a
decade of decadence and spawned some seriously stellar music. Join
us as we deep dive into the rise and fall
of seventies disco. If you want to take a deeper
dive into the artists and songs you just heard, check
out our curated playlist at the Speed of Sound page
(52:20):
on the I Heart app. Until next time, you can
find 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
(52:43):
Sound would like to extend a big thanks to filmmaker
Ron Man for his permission to use excerpts from his
sensational documentary Twist. I highly recommend 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
(53:06):
out the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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