Download Free Chubby Checker * Songs

Chubby Checker music biography continued...

poultry shop while in high school, and kept its customers entertained by singing and cracking jokes in the workplace. His on-the-job antics helped win an audition with the local Cameo-Parkway label, who signed the novice singer in 1959. At the suggestion of Dick Clark's wife, the outsized youth was re-named Chubby Checker. His first two singles, "The Class" and "Dancing Dinosaur," were minor novelty hits. Cameo encouraged him to make his own version of "The Twist," a song originally written and performed by Hank Ballard, which was already having modest success on the charts. But it was Checker's version and his accompanying dance routine that gave the song new life. As a dance movement, the Twist revolutionized popular culture by giving couples the freedom to break apart on the dance floor. An appearance on Dick Clark's American Bandstand catapulted Checker's version of "The Twist" to the number 1 Billboard spot in August 1961, where it remained on the charts for 18 straight weeks. In November of that year, it reentered the charts again for a record-breaking 21 weeks. With this incredible achievement, "The Twist" became the first and only 45 single to ever appear in the number 1 spot in two different years, and made Chubby Checker a rock and roll icon.



Checker would go on to record many more songs in the following years, but none matched the success of "The Twist." He continued to capitalize on the twist theme with similarly titled songs, such as "Twistin' U.S.A." and "Twist it Up" in the early 1960s. In 1988, Checker returned to the Top 40 for the first time in a quarter century when he appeared on the Fat Boys' rap rendition of "The Twist." A decade later he came out with "Let's Twist Again" an endearing knockoff of the original. In 2008 Chubby Checker's "The Twist" was named the biggest chart hit of all time by Billboard magazine. Never ready to quit, in July 2008 Checker also had a #1 single on Billboard's dance chart with "Knock Down the Walls". He continues to perform for a whole new generation of fans to this day.