Chubby Checker, King of the Twist

Chubby Checker King of the Twist

*Few records have changed popular culture as completely as "The Twist." When Chubby Checker sang it on national television in 1960, he gave the world a dance anyone could do, alone and without a partner, and launched a craze that crossed lines of race, age and class.*

Born Ernest Evans on October 3, 1941, in Spring Gulley, South Carolina, he grew up in the row houses of South Philadelphia. As a teenager he worked at a produce market and a poultry shop, entertaining customers with songs and impressions of popular singers. His boss helped him get an audition with Cameo-Parkway Records. Dick Clark's wife, noting his resemblance to Fats Domino, suggested the name "Chubby Checker" as a play on "Fats" and "Domino."

In 1960 Checker recorded a cover of "The Twist," a song first released by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters. Clark featured him on American Bandstand, and the record went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 that September. Remarkably, it returned to No. 1 in January 1962, after adults — from Manhattan's Peppermint Lounge to the jet set — discovered the dance. It remains the only single to top the Hot 100 in two separate chart runs, and Billboard later named it one of the biggest hits in the chart's history.

Checker followed with a string of dance records, including "Pony Time," "Let's Twist Again," which won a Grammy, "The Fly" and "Limbo Rock." Musicians and dance historians credit the Twist with ushering in an era of open, free-form dancing that shaped rock, soul and disco for decades to come.

**The Fight Over Royalties**

Like many Black artists of his generation, Checker earned far less from his recordings than the companies that sold them. For years he spoke publicly about unpaid royalties and about being shut out of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame despite his enormous influence. In 2013 he sued Hewlett-Packard and Palm over a smartphone app that used his name without permission, and he pressed record companies over royalty accounting. His campaign became part of a broader reckoning over how the music industry treated Black performers in the 1950s and 1960s.

**Hall of Fame Recognition**

After decades of being overlooked, Chubby Checker was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2025, recognized with the Musical Influence Award. For many fans, the honor corrected a long-standing omission and affirmed what the dance floor had shown for sixty years: the Twist changed the world.

Checker continued to perform well into his eighties, a living link to the birth of rock and roll and to the Black musical traditions at its heart.