It’s 64 years since Chubby Checker topped the charts with a song which would forever change our dance floors.
"It's the dance that gave us everything we have. In fact, the way we dance on the dance floor is as old as my career," Chubby Checker told KCLU, ahead of his concert in Santa Barbara on Saturday August 31.
It was the song that set the whole world twisting - and they never stopped, said Checker.
"It's more than just the twist. But what the twist has given us. It has given us this style that we have enjoyed on the dance floor. Where I know where you first went to your first dance...after you heard the twist and you were looking at the guy, and the guy was looking at you and you were doing something. Well, not only that, we were looking at each other, dancing the twist, but every dance after that looks the same," he said.
"The piano has so many notes. Well, the Twist, the Pony, the Fly, the Shape, the Hucklebuck are the dancing keyboards to the alphabet of how we dance on the dance floor to everybody's music. And before Chubby it wasn't there."
"We brought fun to the music business, and the teenagers finally had their dance. And every teenage and all the young people after that had a chance to do the boogie and disco. It's a great thing to be able to go out and and illustrate the Twist, because that gives us all the things that we've done all these years on the dance floor. It's quite a privilege," said Checker.
It was Dick Clark’s Bandstand that gave Chubby his big break to a national audience - and Dick Clark also had a hand in the distinctive moniker.
He had the nickname Chubby from 11-years-old.
"I find myself in the studio doing a project for Dick Clark, and I was singing a Fats Domino song, and this woman says, 'that's Chubby'. He says, 'Chubby like Fats, let's call him Checker, like Domino'. And then Chubby became Chubby Checker, and she was Mrs Dick Clark."
Proceeds from Saturday’s Chubby Checker and the Wildcats concert at the Lobero Theater will benefit the Daniel Bryant Youth and Family Centers, an organization which provides outpatient treatment for youth struggling with substance abuse and mental health disorders in Santa Barbara County.
