“Back in the day,” Chubby Checker tells Billboard from his home in New Jersey, “I said, ‘I don’t want to be in the Rock Hall when I’m dead. I want to smell my flowers when I’m here.’ And I’m smelling my flowers…a little late in the game, I would admit, but I’m still alive to see Chubby Checker in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.”
Eligible since the first Rock Hall class in 1986, the 83-year-old responsible for “The Twist” and other dance sensations will finally arrive in the shrine during the Nov. 8 induction ceremony in Los Angeles — on his first nomination, no less. That’s come as a surprise, even shock, to many fans since the news broke about Checker’s induction, but the South Carolina native (born Ernest Evans) says it’s not something he’s been fretting about over the years.
“It’s another milestone — and the beat goes on,” he notes.
Nevertheless, Checker famously protested outside of the Rock Hall museum in Cleveland back in 2002, but he clarifies that it wasn’t simply about his exclusion from the ranks. “I wanted people to know that Chubby’s music was not being played, that’s all it was,” he explains. “The protest was, ‘Please play Chubby’s music.’ The best thing for any artist is to get his music played, and my music wasn’t getting played and I was a little upset about it. You can walk into the supermarket and hear (sings) ‘Bennie and the Jets’…but not ‘The Twist,’ and you look around the supermarket and every company’s got some kind of twist product, you know? I did it very nicely. I didn’t try to cause any problems. I never protested anything in my life except that.”
Checker will, of course, enter the Rock Hall with ample credentials as a groundbreaker and architect. Inspired to pursue music after seeing country great Ernest Tubb perform at a South Carolina fair when he was four years old, Checker and his family moved to South Philadelphia and he began singing doo-wop as a youth. Nicknamed Chubby by a boss at the produce market where he worked, he auditioned as a teen for American Bandstand host Dick Clark, whose wife Barbara added Checker as a surname as a salute to Fats Domino.
Checker imitated Domino, Elvis Presley and other poplar singers at the time for a 1959 single called “The Class,” after which Clark suggested he take on “The Twist,” which was written by Hank Ballard — based on dances he saw teenagers doing in Tampa, Fla. It was only a modest success for him and his band, the Midnighters. Adding dance moves to his performance, Checker took the song to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 during September 1960 and then for a second time in January 1962 — the only single to do that until Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” decades down the road.
“‘The Twist’ gave us what we have on the dance floor — and is still giving us that,” says Checker, who despite his Philadelphia roots was a supporter of the Rock Hall being built in Cleveland, in deference to pioneering radio DJ Alan Freed. “Before (‘The Twist’), Elvis and Little Richard and Bill Haley and Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly, they were doing the swing to their songs. Then Chubby Checker comes along and…the whole world changed.” Checker followed “The Twist” with other dance songs, including “Pony Time,” “The Fly,” “Limbo Rock,” “Let’s Twist Again” and a resurrection of the late ‘40s dance “The Hucklebuck.”
“Chubby Checker never left the dance floor,” he says. “I used to call myself the wheel that rock rolls on, because anyone after Chubby Checker who had a song that you could dance to, they were in my world, that I brought to the dance floor. Dancing to the beat is what we brought, and it’s still there — no matter what it is. It’s called the boogie, and the boogie is still going on. Someone once said, ‘Chubby, you want to do a disco song?’ ‘Why? I did that already.’”
In all, Checker has had 32 songs (and seven top 10 hits) on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2008 Billboard honored “The Twist” as No. 1 on the Greatest of All Time Hot 100 Songs list, which it held until the Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” took the honor in 2021. Nevertheless, Checker notes, “it will always be the No. 1 song. There will be a number two No. 1 song, a number three No. 1 song, but (‘The Twist’) was the first and will always be the first.”
“The Twist” has also been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry. The Rock Hall honored “The Twist” in 2018 by inducting the single as part of a new initiative — a practice that has not been repeated since.
Checker has no intention of recording anything new — “How am I gonna invent the wheel twice?” he asks — but still performs regularly. And that continuing demand, he says, has mitigated any disappointment he may have felt while waiting for his Rock Hall induction.
“Listen, I’m a blessed human being,” Checker says. “In spite of everything, my dreams come true every day. Every time I go on stage my dream comes true, my dream is renewed — that’s what keeps me going. I’m a blessed man in this world.”
