Come on baby, let's do the twist

I watch this video, and I feel as if it was recorded on another planet:



When Dick Clark died last week, plenty of people wrote up his story, which in fact was very simple. He was a smart businessman who started out in music and went on to build a fantastic television empire. He wasn't a musician; he just happened to see his chance with American Bandstand, and he took it. Not that he didn't do well with it, but it could just as easily have been a hog auction show, if that's what the traffic would have borne. Not that Clark wasn't, we are sure, a fine fellow. But the teens of the Bandstand era didn't exactly relate to him; it's just that, you didn't not relate to him. He didn't represent the music, but nor did he represent the older generation. He was neutral. Probably anyone who was not neutral couldn't have pulled it off.

What he pulled off is what you see in the Chubby Checker video. Groups came on the show and lip synched. That was the live portion. The rest of it was just listening and dancing to records. What makes Chubby extra interesting is that he doesn't just stand there and mouth the words. He throws in the Twist. Which is why the video feels like it was recorded on another planet, a planet where they had dance crazes that took the nation by storm.

It wasn't all that long ago, folks.

Chubby Checker's reminiscence is at Let's Do the Twist: Chubby Checker Remembers Dick Clark. It seems that it was Clark who invented Chubby Checker, so to speak.

That was some planet!
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