‘I Need to Scent My Flowers’

“Again within the day,” Chubby Checker tells Billboard from his dwelling in New Jersey, “I stated, ‘I don’t need to be within the Rock Corridor once I’m lifeless. I need to scent my flowers once I’m right here.’ And I’m smelling my flowers…a little bit late within the sport, I might admit, however I’m nonetheless alive to see Chubby Checker within the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame.”

Eligible because the first Rock Corridor class in 1986, the 83-year-old chargeable for “The Twist” and different dance sensations will lastly arrive within the shrine in the course of the Nov. 8 induction ceremony in Los Angeles — on his first nomination, no much less. That’s come as a shock, even shock, to many followers because the information broke about Checker’s induction, however the South Carolina native (born Ernest Evans) says it’s not one thing he’s been fretting about over time.

“It’s one other milestone — and the beat goes on,” he notes.

However, Checker famously protested outdoors of the Rock Corridor museum in Cleveland again in 2002, however he clarifies that it wasn’t merely about his exclusion from the ranks. “I needed folks to know that Chubby’s music was not being performed, that’s all it was,” he explains. “The protest was, ‘Please play Chubby’s music.’ The most effective factor for any artist is to get his music performed, and my music wasn’t getting performed and I used to be a little bit upset about it. You possibly can stroll into the grocery store and listen to (sings) ‘Bennie and the Jets’…however not ‘The Twist,’ and also you look across the grocery store and each firm’s obtained some form of twist product, you realize? I did it very properly. I didn’t attempt to trigger any issues. I by no means protested something in my life besides that.”

Checker will, in fact, enter the Rock Corridor with ample credentials as a groundbreaker and architect. Impressed to pursue music after seeing nation nice Ernest Tubb carry out at a South Carolina honest when he was 4 years outdated, Checker and his household moved to South Philadelphia and he started singing doo-wop as a youth. Nicknamed Chubby by a boss on the produce market the place he labored, he auditioned as a teen for American Bandstand host Dick Clark, whose spouse Barbara added Checker as a surname as a salute to Fat Domino.

Checker imitated Domino, Elvis Presley and different poplar singers on the time for a 1959 single referred to as “The Class,” after which Clark recommended he tackle “The Twist,” which was written by Hank Ballard — primarily based on dances he noticed youngsters doing in Tampa, Fla. It was solely a modest success for him and his band, the Midnighters. Including dance strikes to his efficiency, Checker took the track to No. 1 on the Billboard Scorching 100 throughout September 1960 after which for a second time in January 1962 — the one single to try this till Mariah Carey’s “All I Need For Christmas Is You” many years down the highway.

“‘The Twist’ gave us what we have now on the dance flooring — and remains to be giving us that,” says Checker, who regardless of his Philadelphia roots was a supporter of the Rock Corridor being in-built Cleveland, in deference to pioneering radio DJ Alan Freed. “Earlier than (‘The Twist’), Elvis and Little Richard and Invoice Haley and Fat Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly, they had been doing the swing to their songs. Then Chubby Checker comes alongside and…the entire world modified.” Checker adopted “The Twist” with different dance songs, together with “Pony Time,” “The Fly,” “Limbo Rock,” “Let’s Twist Once more” and a resurrection of the late ‘40s dance “The Hucklebuck.”

“Chubby Checker by no means left the dance flooring,” he says. “I used to name myself the wheel that rock rolls on, as a result of anybody after Chubby Checker who had a track that you may dance to, they had been in my world, that I delivered to the dance flooring. Dancing to the beat is what we introduced, and it’s nonetheless there — it doesn’t matter what it’s. It’s referred to as the boogie, and the boogie remains to be occurring. Somebody as soon as stated, ‘Chubby, you need to do a disco track?’ ‘Why? I did that already.’”

In all, Checker has had 32 songs (and 7 prime 10 hits) on the Billboard Scorching 100. In 2008 Billboard honored “The Twist” as No. 1 on the Biggest of All Time Scorching 100 Songs checklist, which it held till the Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” took the dignity in 2021. However, Checker notes, “it is going to all the time be the No. 1 track. There can be a quantity two No. 1 track, a quantity three No. 1 track, however (‘The Twist’) was the primary and can all the time be the primary.”

“The Twist” has additionally been inducted into the Grammy Corridor of Fame and the Library of Congress’ Nationwide Recording Registry. The Rock Corridor honored “The Twist” in 2018 by inducting the one as a part of a brand new initiative — a follow that has not been repeated since.

Checker has no intention of recording something new — “How am I gonna invent the wheel twice?” he asks — however nonetheless performs usually. And that persevering with demand, he says, has mitigated any disappointment he could have felt whereas ready for his Rock Corridor induction.

“Hear, I’m a blessed human being,” Checker says. “Finally, my goals come true day by day. Each time I am going on stage my dream comes true, my dream is renewed — that’s what retains me going. I’m a blessed man on this world.”