As jazz drummer Art Blakey famously pointed out, “All music is dance music”.
Before the British Invasion and Bob Dylan, American pop music was inundated with “dance crazes”. Later on, there would be steps called “The Jerk”, “The Frug” “The Hully Gully” and “The Swim”, to name just a few, but the first one that really caught on (OK, there was “The Stroll”, but…) for Baby Boomers was “The Twist” which was introduced to Eisenhower kids on the Dick Clark Show on August 6, 1960. This collection of 25 tunes is part of the wake of songs that caught on to the Twist bandwagon. After all, you can only play Chubby Checker so many times.
Here, you get pieces like Twist progenitor Hank Ballard (remember “Work With Me Annie”?) with a good rockin’ tonight take of “Good Twistin’ Tonight” while The Champs revisit their big hit with a sax wailing “Tequila Twist”. Competing with Sputnick, Billy Nix gives a space age reading on “Moon Twist” while The Band backs Dale Hawkins for a fun “Do The Twist”. The Marcels doo wop “Twistin’ Fever”, The Marvelettes give a soul sister’d “Slow Twistin’
while the twist goes from New Orleans with Gary US Bonds’ “Twist Twist Senora” to Tulsa with a western swing on “Steelball Twist” by Dee Page and His Western All Stars” and The Ventures go on a surfin’ safari for “Guitar Twist”.
Yes, people danced in fancy suits and dresses, with a cigarette in one hand and martini in the other. These were our parents? Where did the next generation go wrong?