The Twist topped the charts twice, and its singer wished it hadn't
Chubby Checker's cover of The Twist hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1960, then did it again in a separate run in late 1961, this time powered by adults. In 2008 Billboard named it the most popular single in Hot 100 history. Checker later complained the song ruined his life.
He was born Ernest Evans in South Carolina in 1941 and grew up in the projects of South Philadelphia, where Fabian was a classmate. He entertained customers at a poultry shop and a produce market with songs and impressions; his boss at the market called him Chubby. The poultry shop owner and a songwriter friend arranged a private recording for the TV host Dick Clark, and Clark's wife, charmed by his Fats Domino impression, suggested the playful twist on that name: Chubby Checker.
His first single, The Class, was a novelty in which he impersonated a string of acts, from Elvis Presley to The Chipmunks, all performing the same nursery rhyme, Mary Had a Little Lamb. Clark sent it out as a Christmas greeting in 1958, and the response won Checker a record deal. In July 1960, aged 18, he introduced his version of The Twist in Wildwood, New Jersey. The song's writer, Hank Ballard, had released it a year earlier with only modest success, but Checker's version spread through Clark's American Bandstand. Teenagers drove the first run to number one; a lively Ed Sullivan Show performance seen by over 10 million people sparked the second.
Dance crazes followed, including the Pony, the Fly and the Limbo, and Let's Twist Again won a Grammy in 1962. Yet Checker felt typecast as a dance demonstrator, saying nobody believed he had talent and that the song wiped out his hopes of nightclub stardom. By 1965 The Twist had sold over 15 million copies, but the British Invasion ended his run of hits, and legal disputes at his label kept the original recordings off the market for decades.
He never quite stopped. A 1988 remake with the hip-hop trio The Fat Boys reached number two in the UK, and in 2008 he topped Billboard's dance chart. After protesting a perceived snub in 2002, he was finally selected for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2025.
Source: Chubby Checker
