January 30, 2011: Don't Knock The Twist

The Twist was the first international dance craze in the early 60's inspired by rock and roll, particularly Hank Ballard's 1959 B-Side "The Twist" (to “Teardrops on Your Letter”) and most famously covered by Chubby Checker in 1962 to become a No. 1 hit.  It was in 1961, at the height of the craze, when patrons of Manhattan's Peppermint Lounge on West 45th Street were twisting the night away to the house band, a local Jersey outfit called Joey Dee and the Starliters, and their song "The Peppermint Twist" inspiring the first of many "Twist" movies with "Hey, Let's Twist."  The film and soundtrack solidified making the Peppermint Lounge a world-famous venue.  The craze continued with Sam Cooke's "Twistin' the Night Away" and The Isley Brothers' "Twist and Shout," also later to be made even more widely-known as a No. 2 hit for the Beatles.  

Drawing fire from critics who felt it was much too provocative for the day's youth, the dance inspired such dances as the Watusi, the Mashed Potato, the Jerk, The Pony and the Funky Chicken before being steamrolled by the British Invasion; however, not before film and television got its hands on it.  Some may have been more recently introduced to the dance in 1994's Pulp Fiction when Uma Thurman and John Travolta twisted to Chuck Berry as part of the Jack Rabbit Slim's Twist Contest (reviving Travolta's career) or in 2007 in an early episode of Season One Mad Men when Peggy Olsen and her Sterling Cooper co-workers celebrated her promotion to copywriter by twisting to Chubby Checker. 

 

This week on Morricone Youth (Sunday 2-4 pm ET), your host of all things soundtrack Devon E. Levins will be digging a little deeper into the craze exploring how it was portrayed internationally in film and television.  That's right!  It's 50 years later and no doubt that 2011 is the Year That The Twist Broke.  Don't Knock It!

(Originally posted on EVR blog 1/28/11 5:05 PM ET)

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