Chubby Checker is heading to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but it wasn’t always this way. More than 20 years ago, he famously protested the very museum that will now celebrate him.
“Back in the day,” Chubby Checker told Billboard, “I said, ‘I don’t want to be in the Rock Hall when I’m dead. I want to smell my flowers when I’m here.’ And I’m smelling my flowers…a little late in the game.”
The 84-year-old, born Ernest Evans in South Carolina, has been eligible for induction since the first Rock Hall class in 1986. On Saturday, November 8 in Los Angeles, the artist who turned “The Twist” and other classic dance hits into worldwide sensations will finally be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
“It’s another milestone — and the beat goes on,” Checker said, reflecting on the honor. Although this tribute has been a long time coming, Checker has had a complicated relationship with the famed organization.
In 2002, Checker famously protested outside the Rock Hall museum in Cleveland. However, he said it wasn’t about recognition, it was about making sure his music was heard.
“I wanted people to know that Chubby’s music was not being played, that’s all it was,” he explained. “The protest was, ‘Please play Chubby’s music.’ The best thing for any artist is to get his music played, and my music wasn’t getting played and I was a little upset about it.”
He explained, “You can walk into the supermarket and hear (sings) ‘Bennie and the Jets’…but not ‘The Twist,’ and you look around the supermarket and every company’s got some kind of twist product, you know? I did it very nicely. I didn’t try to cause any problems. I never protested anything in my life except that.”
Checker’s path to rock stardom began at age four, after seeing a performance by country star Ernest Tubb. Later, he and his family moved to South Philadelphia, where he sang doo-wop as a young boy.
A produce market boss gave him the nickname “Chubby,” and American Bandstand host Dick Clark suggested he take the surname “Checker” as a tribute to Fats Domino.
He started his recording career with a 1959 single called “The Class”, emulating popular artists like Domino and Elvis Presley. But it was “The Twist,” written by Hank Ballard, that catapulted him to fame.
By adding dance moves to the song, Checker made it a cultural phenomenon, boasting it to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1960 and again in 1962. It remained the only single to achieve this feat until Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” decades later.
“‘The Twist’ gave us what we have on the dance floor — and is still giving us that,” said Checker. Beyond “The Twist,” Checker’s influence includes hits like “Pony Time,” “The Fly,” “Limbo Rock,” “Let’s Twist Again” and a revival of “The Hucklebuck.”
“Chubby Checker never left the dance floor,” he explained. “I used to call myself the wheel that rock rolls on, because anyone after Chubby Checker who had a song that you could dance to, they were in my world, that I brought to the dance floor. Dancing to the beat is what we brought, and it’s still there — no matter what it is. It’s called the boogie, and the boogie is still going on. Someone once said, ‘Chubby, you want to do a disco song?’ ‘Why? I did that already.’”
Checker’s career includes 32 songs on the Billboard Hot 100, seven of which reached the top 10. In 2008, Billboard ranked “The Twist” as the No. 1 Greatest of All Time Hot 100 Song, a title it held until 2021.
Yet Checker maintains that “The Twist” will always hold its iconic status. “There will be a number two No. 1 song, a number three No. 1 song, but (‘The Twist’) was the first and will always be the first.”
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