Exposure for the song on American Bandstand and on The Dick Clark Saturday Night Show helped propel the song to the top of the American charts. Checker's version featured Buddy Savitt on sax and Ellis Tollin on drums, with backing vocals by the Dreamlovers. He settled on Checker, whose voice was very similar to Ballard's. Ballard was unavailable, and Clark searched for a local artist to record the song.
When the song proved popular with his audience, Clark attempted to book Ballard to perform on the show. The song became popular on a Baltimore television dance show hosted by local DJ Buddy Deane Deane recommended the song to Dick Clark, host of the national American Bandstand. The song ultimately became the B-side of Hank Ballard and The Midnighters' 1959 single "Teardrops on Your Letter".Ĭhubby Checker version "The Twist"
īallard thought "The Twist" was the hit side, but King Records producer Henry Glover preferred the ballad "Teardrops on Your Letter", which he'd written himself. They did not get around to recording the released version until November 11, 1958, when the Midnighters were in Cincinnati. This version appeared on the box set "The Vee-Jay Story" in 1993, but it went unreleased at the time. They originally recorded a loose version of the song in a Florida studio for Vee-Jay Records in early 1958, with slightly different lyrics, featuring Green on guitar playing like Jimmy Reed. Green and Ballard already had written a song together called "Is Your Love for Real", which was based on Clyde McPhatter and The Drifters' 1955 song " What'cha Gonna Do", so they created an entirely new song by simply putting the new Twist words to the older melody. In a 2014 interview with Tom Meros, Midnighters member Lawson Smith claimed that The Gospel Consolaters' Nathaniel Bills wrote the song and initially asked The Spaniels to record it, and that Ballard "stole" the song, falsely claiming authorship. Hank Ballard wrote "The Twist" after seeing teenagers in Tampa, Florida doing the titular dance. In 2014, Billboard magazine declared the song the "biggest hit" of the 1960s. This version reached number 2 in the United Kingdom and number 1 in Germany. In 1988, "The Twist" again became popular due to a new recording of the song by The Fat Boys featuring Chubby Checker. This would not happen for another song for nearly 59 years until December 2020, when Mariah Carey's " All I Want for Christmas Is You" reached the summit after previously topping in another separate chart run in December 2019. Ĭhubby Checker's 1960 cover version of the song reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on September 19, 1960, where it stayed for one week, and setting a record at the time 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. On the US Billboard Hot R&B Sides chart, the original version of "The Twist" first peaked at number sixteen in 1959 and at number six in 1960. Ballard's version was a moderate hit, peaking at number 28 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1960. It was inspired by the twist dance craze. " The Twist" is an American pop song written and originally released in 1958 by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters as a B-side to "Teardrops on Your Letter".
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