When Chubby Changed History

Fifty years ago, a limousine pulled up outside Wildwood’s Rainbow Club at Pacific and Spicer avenues and dislodged a recent high school graduate who promptly entered the club virtually unseen through a discreet doorway. By just about any standards, what happened that night inside the club had a tremendous impact on American history.
America — and indeed the entire world — was never the same. Well, at least we didn’t dance the same way we had prior to that fateful summer.
“I had just graduated from South Philadelphia High in June of 1960, and one month later I was performing at the Rainbow Club,” Chubby Checker told me in a recent telephone interview.
“But I was not old enough to be in the club,” he explained, “so I had to enter from a side door, and then go through the office and onto the stage — where I was allowed — in order to do my act. Afterward, I had to go back through the office and out the side into the limo that took me right back to my hotel.
What Checker did that night was perform his emerging hit, ‘The Twist,’ a song that was impacting teenagers all across the country. It was soon to change dancing styles all over the Earth, supplanting the long-established ‘jitterbug’ or ‘jive’ as the dance of choice wherever an up-tempo song brought teens out onto a dance floor.
“The reason for it’s (The Twist) popularity and why no one wanted to jitterbug anymore was because now people liked the idea of ‘dancing by myself’, Checker said. “It all started with The Twist.
“People fail to realize,” he continued, “that the movement is hidden; it’s all done ‘by myself’, and we’ve been dancing like that ever since.”
His cover of The Twist (the original was by Hank Ballard, who had composed the song) was intended as a ‘B’ side of the record. The ‘A’ side was a novelty tune called ‘Toot’.
“But Porky Chadwick, a DJ in Pittsburg turned it over,” he said. “Thank God for Porky Chadwick!”
Wildwood was where it all started back in 1960, and at this year’s Fabulous ’50s Weekend, Oct. 15-17, the island will celebrate the 50th Anniversary of The Twist — recognizing a half century of ‘dancing apart to the beat’, as Checker categorizes it.
“If you to go back to (a period of) four or five months before my career began, to four or five months after The Twist,” Checker noted, “you’ll easily see how everything changed (during that duration). The Twist was not only the biggest song of the sixties; it was recently named the number one song of all time! We’re going to bring all of that to the Wildwoods.”
Checker will appear at Wildwoods Convention Center at 7 p.m. Oct. 16, along with other artists that had hits based on The Twist, such as, Dee Dee Sharp, Joey Dee and The Starliters, and The Marvelettes.
That style of ‘dancing apart to the beat’, spilled over into other dances — The Pony, The Stomp, the Mashed Potatoes… and has stayed with us. Just watch people dancing at a wedding.
“Even when we’re not playing The Twist, we’re still dancing by ourselves,” Checker emphasized.
Dancing was apparently not the only thing that The Twist changed.
“Aerobic exercise did not show its head until The Twist,’ Checker said. “It (aerobics) did not exist. Someone got an idea and said, ‘let’s start playing music.’ Just that one thing — dancing by myself — caused people to exercise.
The Twist is the only record to hit number one on the charts twice: in 1960 and again in 1962. Not even Elvis can lay claim to that distinction.
He has many musical watershed accomplishments:
• the only artist to have five albums in the top 12 all at once
• the only artist to have a song to be #1 twice
• the only artist to have nine double-sided hits.
So why don’t we hear a lot more Chubby Checker on the airwaves?
“We’re staying alive because of our live performances,” he said. “We just don’t get air play. You need to see us (in person). If air play matched our live performances, well…let me just say this; if you haven’t seen us lately, then you haven’t seen Chubby Checker.”
If you miss him at the Wildwood Fab Fifties Weekend, you can still catch him Nov. 27 at Mount Airy Casino & Resort in Pocono, Pennsylvania. You can also see what else he’s up to by accessing his Web site: chubbychecker.com.
But Wildwood is the place to go if you want to see where it all began performed by the man who started it all.
“The Twist solidified me with the people who were C-O-O-L,” Checker said.
And one-half century later, things are still going on ‘apart, to the beat.”