I can’t dance. I’ve never been able to dance. The term “two-left feet” was invented just to describe how I look when I’m on the dance floor. I grew up when rock and roll were just starting and everybody could dance to the fast songs except me. In high school, I would go hide somewhere when the fast songs were played. Well, you get the idea.
Then in 1960, something wonderful happened. Chubby Checker put out the first dance song that absolutely anyone could dance to, “The Twist”. When I was in the Air Force, we would go to UFO dances once in a while. Of course, the main we went was to pick up girls and in order to do that, you had to know how to dance. Imagine my surprise when I found out I could do the twist. Anyone could do the twist. It was great.
Would it surprise you to learn that Chubby Checker was a stage name? No, I didn’t think so. He was born Ernest Evans, but that sounded too dull, so he became Chubby Checker. A definite rip-off of Fats Domino from the 50’s. There were movies which featured “The Twist” and Chubby recorded many versions of the twist like “Let’s Twist Again” and “Slow Twist”. He also became the king of the dance record in the sixties with hits like “The Pony” and “The Fly”.
“The Twist” holds another rather unique record. It is the only record in the history of the charts to hit number one twice. It first hit in September of 1960 and again in January of 1962. Looking up news stories for that week, we find that Dag Hammarskjold, the Secretary of the UN dies in a plane crash in the Congo. You could buy a suit for $48 and a white shirt for $2.59. So you could look good for about fifty bucks. On TV was “The Rifleman”, “Dobie Gillis” and “Playhouse 90″. I remember them well.
OK, now, one more time, everybody Twist:
