Chubby Checker is 73 years old today. Born as Ernest Evans, he is a singer-songwriter widely known for popularizing the twist dance style, with his 1960 hit cover of Hank Ballards R&B hit, The Twist.” In September 2008, The Twist topped Billboards list of the most popular singles to have appeared in the Hot 100 since its debut in 1958. Ernest Evans was born in Spring Gulley, South Carolina. He was raised in the projects of South Philadelphia, where he lived with his parents and two brothers. By age eight, Evans formed a street-corner harmony group, and by the time he entered high school, learned to play the piano. He would entertain his classmates by performing vocal impressions of popular entertainers of the day, such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley and Fats Domino. One of his classmates and friends at South Philadelphia High School was Fabiano Forte, who would become a popular performer of the late 1950s and early 1960s as Fabian. After school Evans would entertain customers at his various jobs, including Fresh Farm Poultry on Ninth Street and at the Produce Market with songs and jokes. It was his boss at the Produce Market, Tony A., who gave Evans the nickname Chubby.” The store owner of Fresh Farm Poultry, Henry Colt, was so impressed by Ernests performances for the customers that he, along with his colleague and friend Karl Mann, who worked as a song-writer for Cameo-Parkway Records, arranged for young Chubby to do a private recording for American Bandstand host Dick Clark. It was at this recording session that Evans got his stage name from Clarks wife, who asked Evans what his name was. Well, he replied, my friends call me Chubby’.” As he had just completed a Fats Domino impression, she smiled and said, As in Checker? That little play on words (chubby meaning fat, and checkers, like dominoes, being a game) got an instant laugh and stuck, and from then on, Evans would use the name Chubby Checker.” Checker privately recorded a novelty single for Clark in which the singer portrayed a school teacher with an unruly classroom of musical performers. The premise allowed Checker to imitate such acts as Fats Domino, The Coasters, Elvis Presley, Cozy Cole, Ricky Nelson, Frankie Avalon and Fabian as The Chipmunks, each singing Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Clark sent the song out as his Christmas greeting, and it received such good response that Cameo-Parkway signed Checker to a recording contract. Titled The Class,” the single became Checkers first release, charting at #38 in the spring of 1959. Checker introduced his version of The Twist at the age of 18 in July 1960 in Wildwood, New Jersey at the Rainbow Club. The Twist went on to become the only single to top the Billboard Hot 100 twice, in two separate chart runs. (Bing Crosbys White Christmas had done so on Billboards earlier chart.) The Twist had previously peaked at #16 on the Billboard rhythm and blues chart, in the 1959 version recorded by its author, Hank Ballard, whose band The Midnighters first performed the dance on stage. Checkers Twist, however, was a nationwide smash, aided by his many appearances on Dick Clarks American Bandstand, the Top 10 American Bandstand ranking of the song, and the teenagers on the show who enjoyed dancing the Twist. In 2008, Chubby Checkers The Twist was named the biggest chart hit of all time by Billboard magazine. Billboard looked at all singles that made the charts between 1958 and 2008. Here, Checker does the twist on American Bandstand.
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 06:11:46 +0000
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