CHUBBY CHECKER
Chubby Checker (born Ernest Evans; October 3, 1941) is an American singer and dancer. He is widely known for popularizing the twist dance style, with his 1960 hit cover of Hank Ballard’s R&B hit “The Twist”. In September 2008, “The Twist” topped Billboard’s list of the most popular singles to have appeared in the Hot 100 since its debut in 1958, an honor it maintained for an August 2013 update of the list. He also popularized the Limbo Rock and its trademark limbo dance, as well as various dance styles such as The Fly. Checker is the only recording artist to place five albums in the Top 12 at once. Clay Cole said: “Chubby Checker has never been properly acknowledged for one major contribution to pop culture — Chubby and the Twist got adults out and onto the dance floor for the first time. Before the Twist dance phenomenon, grown ups did not dance to teenage music.” (More from Wikipedia)
David White left Danny and the Juniors and formed a production and songwriting team with John Madara called Madara and White Productions. One of their early hits was a #7 song that they wrote and produced in 1961 for Chubby Checker called “The Fly”.
(August 2015)
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Rock and roll pioneer Bill Haley was from Detroit; in 1955, “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and His Comets was the first big rock and roll hit. Hank Ballard and the Midnighters had a crossover R&B hit in 1954 with “Work with Me, Annie”; this band also recorded the original version of “The Twist” in 1959 as a B-side that Chubby Checker catapulted to a nationwide craze the following year. More recently, the White Stripes is one of the primary bands that ignited the Garage Rock Revival of the early 2000’s, among a host of other like-minded Detroit groups.
(March 2016)
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The Fat Boys were pretty hard to miss in the early days of rap music, not only because of their prodigious weight, but also due to their high-profile cover of “The Twist” that featured Chubby Checker, who had originally recorded the mega-hit “The Twist”. Years before the Yo! MTV Raps program debuted in 1988, the Fat Boys were featured in one of MTV’s earliest commercials.
(September 2016)
