Song of the Day 5/2: Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, “The Twist”
Discussing the induction of Chubby Checker into the rock and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Nathan Arizona said one song – “The Twist,” obviously – shouldn’t be enough to get someone in. Why not? It already got Hank Ballard inducted.
Ballard, who headlined the vocal group the Midnighters, had other hits, but he didn’t get into the Hall of Fame on the strength of “Finger Poppin’ Time.” He was admitted in 1990, though the rest of the Midnighters didn’t join him until 20 years later, when the Hall admitted they should have been included in the first place.
“The Twist,” released in 1959, wasn’t a big hit for Ballard record in large part because of his reputation for risque material. His first big hit was his 1954 composition “Work With Me, Annie,” which he sang suggestively enough to make it clear that “work” was a euphemism. His image was furthered with the follow-up, “Annie Had a Baby” (“Annie had a baby, can’t work no more/Every time she start to working/She has to stop to walk the baby ‘cross the floor”). Both were banned from radio play, yet both made No. 1 on the R&B chart.
Ballard hadn’t had a hit in years when he wrote “The Twist” in 1959, but it wasn’t hard to link his reputation with the dance itself, which was considered sexually suggestive – remember, TV only showed Elvis from the waist up because someone thought the sight of his gyrating hips would send women into a Dionysian frenzy. Ballard was just the guy to make the connection overt.
“The Twist” was originally released as the B-side of a ballad, “Teardrops on Your Letter,” but this was the age of dance crazes, so it caught on. But it wasn’t until younger, fresh-faced Chubby Checker covered it in a cleaner style – he played Pat Boone to Ballard’s Little Richard – that it swept the world.
Ballard didn’t mind Checker cashing in on his song, because Ballard earned the royalties. Some of the Midnighters even taught Checker how to do the dance, which they had learned from teenagers in their audiences.
Once adults started doing the twist, teenagers moved on to wilder dances, but the music industry kept milking the cash cow. To give you an idea of how popular the dance was, more than six dozen songs with “twist” in the title were released between 1960 and 1963. Sam Cooke’s “Twistin’ the Night Away,” Joey Dee’s “Peppermint Twist” were big hits in their own right, and “Twist and Shout” became a hit for both the Isley Brothers and the Beatles.
Twist songs occasionally popped up for the rest of the century – Elton John’s “Your Sister Can’t Twist (But She Can Rock and Roll)” appeared on “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” and Mark Knopfler went on a Spanish holiday and found himself “Twisting By the Pool.”
