‘The Twist’ was a dance inspired by rock and roll music and was to become a worldwide dance craze between 1959 and the early 1960s, enjoying immense popularity.
Today’s song is ‘The Twist’. This song was written and originally released in early 1959 (having been recorded on November 11, 1958) by ‘Hank Ballard and the Midnighters’ as a B-side to ‘Teardrops on Your Letter’. Ballard's version was a moderate 1960 hit, peaking at Number 28 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ chart.
]It would be Chubby Checker’s 1960 cover version of the song which gave birth to the Twist dance craze. His single became a hit, reaching Number 1 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ on September 19, 1960, where it stayed for one week, and setting a record as the only song to reach Number 1 in two different hit parade runs when it resurfaced and topped the popular hit parade again for two weeks starting on January 13, 1962. In 1988, ‘The Twist became popular again due to a new recording of the song by ‘The Fat Boys’ featuring Chubby Checker. This version reached Number 2 in the United Kingdom and Number 1 in Germany. In 2014, ‘Billboard Magazine’ declared the song the "biggest hit of the 1960s”.
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Being a teddy boy who liked rock and roll and Bopping above all other kinds of dances. And yet, while I enjoyed the occasional Twist on the dancefloor, what I and my mates really enjoyed, was seeing the attractive young ladies as they crouched and twisted as low as they could in their short mini-skirts. It was simply impossible for the young female Twisters to go down and maintain their balance without engaging in the unladylike opening of their knees for support and proper grounding.
Of course, there is no gain without pain, and it was simply impossible to ‘get an eyeful’ unless the male Twister also went down with their woman all the way! It took a while before the young women realised that they were showing their colours to their male partners as they waved and wriggled their butts left and right. Once the women Twisters realised that they were showing off ‘their all’ to any Tom, Dick and Harry they Twisted with, many of them decided to Twist in exclusive groups of female Twisters, and let the chaps watch from afar at the side of the dance hall floor.
After the Twist era faded away, all the Boppers were happy to return to the Bopping scene again. With the passing of each year of the 1960s, the good times returned. The mini-skirts and dress lengths got shorter by the year. I can’t remember an era that would prove to be better, freer, and faster in the pace of change than the 1960s. The pill liberated many young couples, but also led to an absence of behavioural control and resulted in a good degree of moral laxity. Many youngsters started smoking pot, sliding in the music festivals of mud, and hippies in San Francisco gave flowers away to passers-by on the street. Communes spread, along with the birth of weird cults; students marched in constant protest against the bomb and the Vietnam War instead of studying in class, and Hovis was the best thing since sliced bread!
I went to Canada to live for a few years in late 1963 to 1965 and I would be in my fifties before a friend at a party got out an old Twisting record and I tried to Twist my way all the way down again. But, alas, it was too late. The Twisting era had long since passed, yet my increasing rheumatoid arthritis in my legs decided to hang around; making it impossible for me to achieve anything but an undignified crouch that was more associated with pain than dance. I was able to carry on Bopping until I reached 70 years of age, but during my 70th year, my leg mobility lessened and my rheumatic arthritis severely worsened. Then, after I developed terminal blood cancer, my dancing days were well and truly over.
Love and peace Bill xxx