Sixties City: Bill Harry's Sixties - The Birth of The Twist

Ballard was to comment, “When I heard ‘The Twist’ on the radio I thought it was me. I was sure it was me. I didn’t find out it wasn’t me until a few weeks later. They did a pretty good job of duplicating my record note for note – and I could have sworn it was me; that’s how close Chubby Checker came to my sound”.

‘The Twist’ was Checker’s fifth record and it sold over three million copies around the world and created a dance sensation. Checker said, “You can’t teach somebody to do The Twist, but its still an easy dance. The first position of the stance is kind of like a boxer’s, then move your hips like you’re drying yourself with a towel. Your body goes back and forth in one direction. From that point you ad-lib energetically”.

Checker recorded some other dance numbers, but returned to the Twist with his million-seller ‘Let’s Twist Again’. This sparked off such a popular interest in the dance that his original ‘The Twist’ was re-released and went to No. 1 in the charts for a second time.
Chubby appeared in the films ‘Twist Around the Clock’ and ‘Don’t Knock the Twist’, which had almost identical plots to the fifties films ‘Rock Around the Clock’ and ‘Don’t Knock the Rock’.

The craze led to the release of approximately fifty singles and fifteen albums on the dance. The singles included Checker’s ‘Slow Twistin’’; U.S. Bond’s ‘Twist, Twist, Senors’; Frank Sinatra’s ‘Everybody’s Twistin’’; Bobby Rydell’s ‘Teach Me to Twist’; The Goodtimers’ ‘It’s Twisting Time’; Johnny Morisette’s ‘Meet Me At the Twistin’ Place’; the Dovell’s ‘Bristol Twistin’ Annie’; The Streamliners’ ‘Everybody’s Doin’ the Twist’; Steve Lawrence’s ‘The Lady Wants To Twist’; Joey Dee’s ‘Peppermint Twist’; Jerry Lee Lewis’ ‘I’ve Been Twistin’’; Jimmy Soul’s ‘Twistin’ Matilda’; King Curtis’ ‘Soul Twist’; The Champs ‘Tequila Twist’; Bill Haley’s ‘Spanish Twist’; Bill Black’s ‘Twist Her’; Danny & the Juniors’ ‘Twistin’ All Night Long’; and Billy Vaughan’s ‘Everybody’s Twisting Down in Mexico.’

There were also various British releases promoting the craze, including Bert Weedon’s ‘Twist Me Pretty Baby’; Eric Delaney’s ‘Washboard Blues Twist’; Brian Poole’s ‘Twist Little Sister’; Frankie Vaughan’s ‘Don’t Stop, Twist’; Emile Ford’s ‘Doin’ The Twist’; Joe Loss’ ‘Twisting the Mood’; Petula Clark’s ‘Ya Ya Twist’ and Susan Maughan’s ‘Baby Doll Twist.’

Checker tried to popularize other dance crazes and his recordings included ‘The Hucklebuck’, ‘Pony Time’, ‘Dance the Mess Around’, ‘Limbo Rock’, ‘Let’s Limbo Some More’, ‘The Fly’, ‘Popeye the Hitchhiker’ and ‘Do the Freddie’.

The early Sixties was a time for the introduction of dances and, apart from The Twist in 1960, there was The Continental, The Pony, The Madison and The Watusi in 1961; The Locomotion in 1962; The Monkey, The Bounce, The Bird, The Shake, The Dog and The Shuffle in 1963; The Jerk in 1964; The Swim, The Barracuda, The Twine, The Philly Freeze, The Boomerang, The Boogaloo, The Duck and The Seesaw between 1965 and 1968 and The Popcorn, The Chicken, The Strut and The Horse in the closing years of the decade.