THROWBACK THURSDAY: Twistin' the Twist
What this country needs is a new dance craze!
Recently, when writing about Joey Dee & The Starliters, who I inducted in my phony Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I was reminded about a what a weird phenomenon the Twist was back in the very early 1960s.
I was just a grade-school kid at the time and just becoming a rock ‘n’ roll radio fanatic and the airwaves seemed to be obsessed with this silly dance. There were massive hits, of course, by the likes of Joey Dee, Chubby Checker, The Isley Brothers, Sam Cooke and others.
The whole Twist craze only lasted a couple of years, but old geezers like me still remember the songs like “The Peppermint Twist,” “Twistin’ the Night Away,” “Let’s Twist Again,” “Twist and Shout,” “Slow Twistin’ ” etc.
But what’s been forgotten are the lesser Twist records, the copycats, the “answer” songs, the parodies, the aging pop stars trying to cash in on the fad. So I’ll post of those here in anticipation of the great Twist Revival of 2026.
Here are The Marvelettes putting a twist on their most marvelous hit:
I’ve always argued that New Orleans wildman Louis Prima was a classic proto-rock ‘n’ roller. But somehow his venture into Twistdom doesn’t seem to help that argument:
The Twist mostly was mostly associated with New York City, home of the Peppermint Lounge. But apparently, they liked it down in Arkansas as well. I’m not familiar with Arkansas rockabilly Bobby Lee Trammell (who later became a state legislator!), but dang, if you’d told me that this song was actually sung by fellow Arkansan Levon Helm, I might have believed you:
If you thought Louis Prima’s Twist song was weird and unnecessary, get a load of Frank Sinatra’s
Barbara Dane came out of the world of folk music. (She was married for several years to my old friend, the late, great Rolf Cahn.) I knew that in addition to her folk music, she also was very respected in the jazz world. Dane, who died in 2024 at the age of 97, performed with the likes of Louis Armstrong and Gene Krupa, as well as blues giants like Muddy Waters, Memphis Slim and Willie Dixon.
But I never knew she also was a twister!
Is anyone who read my early Flaming Spuds post about poetic poet Rod McKuen’s novelty-song career surprised that he had not one, but two Twist songs? The sadist inside me commanded I post both:
I guess Charles Dickens was a Twister too!
Now now everything’s cool, Drac’s a part of the band. But his “Transylvania Twist” never became the hit of the land. But not that Bobby “Boris” Pickett didn’t try:
O.K., this next one isn’t a novelty song. It’s the original version of a song that The Isley Brothers made famous and The Beatles made even more famous. But just like Hank Ballard, whose original recording of “The Twist” faded into obscurity when Chubby Checker’s cover became a hit, The Top Notes’ “Twist and Shout” is largely unknown.
And speaking of Hank Ballard, this Ronny Elliott story song definitely was the greatest Twist song of the 1990s:
