![]() ![]() However, Swann Records’ owner Bernie Binnick, wasn’t interested in recording the song. Still, by the spring of 1960, Clark was looking for a cleaned-up version of the Twist and a new recording artist that he might be able promote on Bandstand. Parkway record sleeve for Chubby Checker’s 1960-61 hit, “The Twist.” Click for vinyl. Ballard and his group had incorporated some pretty risque dance moves as they performed their version of The Twist on stage, and Clark was aware that a couple of their earlier songs had been banned in a few places due to their lyrics. ![]() Clark at the time was facing “payola” inquiries, so he was being extra careful. Binnick picked up Ballard’s 45 rpm record and later played it for Clark back in Philadelphia, who reportedly, at first, found it too bawdy and too risky for his show. Bernie Binnick, a Dick Clark business associate in Swann Records, along with Freddy Cannon, a Swann recording artist, saw the Baltimore kids dancing the new Twist. Black teenagers there had heard the new song at a Hank Ballard & Midnighters performance, and a new dance was evolving with it, also starting to appear on a Baltimore TV dance show, The Buddy Dean Show. Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Dick Clark, host of the then popular American Bandstand TV dance show, had heard that “The Twist” was getting some attention in Baltimore. 16, R&B.ġ959: King 45rpm for Hank Ballard & The Midnighters’ “The Twist.” Click for vinyl. 4 on the R&B chart while “The Twist” rose to No. And sure enough, after its release, “Teardrops” rose to No. King Records then became the group’s label, issuing “The Twist” in 1959 on the “B side” of another of their recordings – “Teardrops On Your Letter.” B-side recordings were less likely to be played by radio DJ’s. But Ballard’s “The Twist,” first recorded in early 1958 by Vee-Jay records in a Florida studio, wasn’t released then, as Ballard and group were in the midst of a label change. In 1958, Hank Ballard, an African American rhythm and blues (R&B) artist, wrote a song named “The Twist.” Ballard was the lead singer with “Hank Ballard and the Midnighters,” an early 1950s group that had become known in R&B circles for several bawdy songs that had done quite well on the R & B music charts. Cassini was also involved with a New York nightclub where the the Twist was popular. 1962: Jackie Kennedy dancing the Twist with her designer, Oleg Cassini, in the London home of her sister, Princess Lee Radziwill, left. ![]()
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