Chubby landed an appearance on the popular program, earning the surname “Checker ” from Clark ’s wife, who likened the singer to Fats Domino, and ensuring a wide audience for his catchy song and dance routine. Fortunately, Philadelphia, Cameo ’s locale, was also home to Dick Clark ’s nationally televised dance show American Bandstand. As Ballard ’s version of “The Twist ” began to gain favor with dancers, Cameo decided to have Checker make a cover recording of it. Performing at work, in church, and on the streets by night with his harmonizing group, the Quantrells, Chubby -as he was nicknamed because of his portly build -was eventually offered a recording contract by Cameo Records.Ĭhecker ’s first two singles for Cameo, “The Class ” and “Dancing Dinosaur, ” failed to attract much in the way of public notice.

He then turned to the chicken-plucking business for a time while amassing fame in his neighborhood for his accurate impressions of singers Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis Presley. Moving with his family to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, when he was eight years old, the youngster became a shoe shiner and was earning $60 a day at the age of nine. ”Ĭhecker was born Ernest Evans on October 3, 1941, in South Carolina. ” Checker continued to capitalize on the twist -which he described to Jon Bowermaster in Newsday as a movement akin to “drying your butt with a towel while grinding out a cigarette ” -and other dances during the early 1960s with such follow-up hits as “Limbo Rock, ” “Pony Time, ” and “Let ’s Twist Again. “What we started in the ’60s set the stage for what is still going on, ” Checker told Boulware. Though rhythm and blues singer Hank Ballard had recorded “The Twist ” earlier, it was Checker ’s version of the song that became the most popular and spread the dance throughout the world. Deemed “one of the pop-cultural symbols of the early ’60s ” by Hugh Boulware in the Chicago Tribune, Chubby Checker is practically synonymous in the minds of most music buffs with the 1960s dance craze, the Twist.

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