Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” goes No.1 on Hot 100 in 1960
The song officially gave birth to the Twist dance craze
Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” goes No.1 on Hot 100 in 1960
In 1960, Former chicken plucker Chubby Checker went to No.1 on the US singles chart Billboard Hot 100 on September 19, 1960 with ‘The Twist’, originally recorded in 1959 by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, where it stayed for one week, and setting a record as the only song to reach number 1 in two different hit parade runs when it resurfaced and topped the popular hit parade again for two weeks starting on January 13, 1962. Chubby Checker’s 1960 cover version of the song gave birth to the Twist dance craze. In July 1960, Checker performed “The Twist” for the first time in front of a live audience at the Rainbow Club in Wildwood, New Jersey and just weeks later, on Aug. 6, 1960, the song became a national sensation after Checker performed it on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. Checker continued to re-record the song througout his career including some variations, being the most famous one “Let’s Twist Again”, one of the biggest hit singles of 1961, it reached No.8 on the U.S. Billboard pop chart in August of that year and subsequently reached No.2 in the U.K. in February 1962. Curiously, “Let’s Twist Again”turned out to be a bigger hit for Checker worldwide than “The Twist”.
Watch Chubby Checker performing the smash hit “The Twist” on American Bandstand 1960
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