The Twist

The twist was a rock and roll dance popular in the early 1960s and also the name of the song that originated it.

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It was the first major international rock and roll dance style in which the couples did not touch each other while dancing.

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The song was written and originally released in 1959 by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters as a B-side, but failed to chart. The dance was first popularized by Chubby Checker in 1960 with a hit cover of "The Twist".

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Faced with explaining to the youthful audience how to do the dance, a member of Checker's entourage came up with the following description:

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:"It's like putting out a cigarette with both feet, and wiping your bottom with a towel, to the beat of the music."

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In 1961, at the height of the Twist craze, patrons at New York's hot Peppermint Lounge on West 45th Street were twisting to the music of the house band, a local group from Jersey, Joey Dee & the Starliters. Their house song "Peppermint Twist (Part 1)," became the number one song in the United States for three weeks in January 1962. Sailors and hookers, hipsters and weekending Yalies danced alongside New York's social elite, including the Duke of Windsor, at the legendary Peppermint Lounge.

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1959: 1959 was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. It is also a song by The Sisters of Mercy on the album Floodland....

Hank Ballard: Hank Ballard (November 18, 1927 - March 2, 2003) was an American R&B singer and a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was born in Detroit, Michigan but grew up in Bessemer, Alabama, where he sang in church. In 1951, Ballard moved back to Detroit and formed a doo wop group. He soon joined...

B-side: In recorded music, the terms A-side and B-side refer to the two sides of 7 inch vinyl records on which singles have been released since the 1950s. The terms have come to refer to the types of song conventionally placed on each side of the record, with the A-side being the featured song (the one tha...

The Twist related Images and Photos (experimental)

Pop Singer Chubby Checker Singing His Hit Song "The Twist" on Dance Floor at Crescendo Nightclub	Twist	Oliver Twist (2007) (DVD)	Oliver Twist (Animated) (DVD)
French Twist	Oliver Twist	Twist of Faith	Twist of Faith (MOD)
Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens) (DVD)	Twist Equation Alarm Clock	Rubik's Twist Game	Zebra's Twist