By: HISTORY.com Editors

1960

Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” launches dance craze

HISTORY.com Editors

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Published: September 16, 2026Last Updated: September 16, 2026

On September 19, 1960, 18-year-old Chubby Checker hits No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart with his cover of “The Twist.” The infectious song ignites a hip-swiveling dance sensation among America’s teenage baby boomers and unleashes a wave of dance-craze records.

Born Ernest Evans in South Carolina, Checker sang in a South Philadelphia street-corner harmony group and earned the nickname “Chubby.” The high schooler’s uncanny impersonations of singers such as Fats Domino and Elvis Presley impressed television host Dick Clark, whose wife gave Evans his stage name. Clark asked Checker to perform “The Twist”—written by Hank Ballard, originally recorded by his band the Midnighters and released in 1959 as a B-side that peaked at No. 28—on “American Bandstand.” Beamed into living rooms across the country, Checker’s strikingly similar cover quickly became a hit.

The 1960s

Historian Yohuru Williams sums up the tumultuous political and cultural movements of the 1960s.

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“The Twist” was lyrically simple as was the accompanying dance move that got Americans wiggling their hips and swiveling on the balls of their feet. Without complicated steps or partners required, the dance that Checker likened to putting out a cigarette with a toe while drying off with a towel was accessible even to people with two left feet.

Although it spent only one week as a chart-topper in 1960, “The Twist” proved no teenage fad. The dance was embraced by celebrities and adults in nightclubs such as New York City’s Peppermint Lounge and Harlem’s Smalls Paradise, which was owned by NBA legend Wilt Chamberlain and touted as “the best twist spot in town.” The sustained popularity of “The Twist” led to its return atop the Billboard Hot 100 for a two-week reign in January 1962, making it the only non-Christmas song to hit No. 1 in two different chart runs, according to Tom Breihan’s The Number Ones.

Quickly dubbed “Mr. Twist,” Checker starred in Twist-themed B movies, recorded several follow-ups such as his Grammy-winning hit “Let’s Twist Again” (1961) and even endorsed a line of Chubby Checker’s Twisters shoes. The first dance-craze record to top the Billboard Hot 100 also ushered in decades of dance hits from “The Loco-Motion” to “The Hustle” to “Macarena.” The song was added to Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2013 and was among the first singles inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

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Citation Information

Article Title: Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” launches dance craze
Author: HISTORY.com Editors
Website Name: History
URL: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/september-19/the-twist-dance-craze-begins

Date Accessed: September 16, 2026
Publisher: A&E Television Networks
Last Updated: September 16, 2026
Original Published Date: September 16, 2026