Let the good times roll and rock. DANCIN

Baby Boomers had more dances than a little bit.

Chubby Checker, for the record, was born Ernest Evans Jr. in Philadelphia,   son of a stevedore and a seamstress. An industrious little fat boy, he worked in a chicken market from sunup until the school bell rang at 8:00 o’clock and then returned to his labors from 3:30 P.M. to 7:30, contributing his twenty-five dollar paycheck to the family. Happily, the 220-pound Ernest could also dance and sing like anything, and his employers, Henry Colt and part-time music man Kal Mann, had the good sense to get him a recording date. What come out was the Twist. Actually, Hank Ballard had recorded a Twist number down in Atlanta two years earlier, in 1959, but it was Checker’s version-and his live performances on TV-that got the dance off the ground. It got Chubby-and, indeed Colt and Mann-out of the chicken market, too. The boy’s earning reached close to a million dollars before was twenty-one. And for what? Anybody could twist. Chubby himself, now below the 200-pound mark as a result of his strenuous exertions, explained how simple it was. “The first position of the stance is like a boxer’s. Thee you move your hips like you’re wiping yourself with a towel. Your body goes back and forth in one direction and your hands go in the other direction. From that point on you ad-lib energetically.” Never touching your partner, of course.

from: Fads Follies and Delusions of the American People by Paul Sann

“In my day, not only did boys and girls dance together but you could tell at a glance which was which.” –Benny Goodman, 1966

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