Sunday Morning Vault: Chubby Checker--The Twist (1961)

     Ernest Evans at times lamented the fact that many overlooked his talent, but one thing is for sure, he was smart enough to ride "The Twist" to a solid career for the entirety of his career.
     Evans was working at a chicken processing plant and a produce market in the late 50's, and was known as a good singer who had the gift of making impressions of popular singers of the day, Fats Domino, Elvis, and Jerry Lee Lewis were just a few of the artists that he would imitate. He would entertain workers at both places with his talents. It was the owner of the produce market and his friend who was a songwriter for Cameo-Parkway records who arraigned for him to make a private recording for Dick Clark (who was still based in Philadelphia at the time) using the voices.
     It was Clark's wife who gave him the name "Checker". She asked him his name and Ernest said that his friends called him, "Chubby". She was making a play on Fats Domino's name when she saying, "Like Checker?". The name got a laugh from all there, but it also stuck. The record that Checker made was sent to Clark's friends as a Christmas gift. However, the folks at Cameo-Parkway was so impressed that they signed him to a contract and released, "The Class" as a single in the spring of 1959. It reached the top 40 later that year.
     "The Twist" had been recorded by Hank Ballard & The Midnighters in 1959, and reached the top 20 that year. They had also introduced the dance, but it was Checker's version, released in the summer of 1960 that stormed up the charts, all the way to #1. It not only hit the top of the charts that year, but it went on to reach number 1 again in late 1961.
     This launched Checker into international stardom, but it also trapped him by producers who saw him as a, "dance" singer, and had him not only attempt songs with a "Twist" theme (Let's Twist Again, Twistin' USA, Slow Twistin'), but a whole bunch of other songs about dancing, (The Hucklebuck, Pony Time, The Fly). He wasn't always happy about this, but on the other hand, was a smart enough businessman to strike while the iron was hot.
     As it turned out, Checker finished with three #1's and had 24 songs on the top 40, with the last time being a re-recording of "The Twist" for a new generation with The Fat Boys in 1988.