Posted on 06/23/2003 9:17:12 AM PDT by foreverfree
Posted on Thu, Jun. 19, 2003
Spurned, with a twist
By Tom Infield
Inquirer Staff Writer
ATLANTIC CITY - Chubby Checker had the gray heads bopping in the aisles the other night during the first of four sold-out concerts at Caesars casino.
If it were up to his audience, mostly children of the 1960s, there is no question that the King of the Twist (El Rey del Twist, to his Latino fans) would have taken his place long ago in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
"Without a doubt, he belongs," said Mike Reichert, 51, of Pasadena, Md.
"I was amazed to find out he isn't there," said Frank DeFrancesco, 56, of Highland Falls, N.Y. "It must be something political."
That's what Checker thinks, too. It must be political. Or snobbish. Or malicious. Or something.
Whatever it is, it has had the former South Philadelphia street kid (now Paoli lawn baron) in a snit. He has complained so long and so loudly about what he sees as "disrespect" that he may actually be hurting his chances of ever getting in. Now, he's even complaining about his hometown, which he says isn't doing enough to help him gain the recognition he feels is coming to him.
"If you whine too much, you're a crybaby, and you're not helping your cause," said Philadelphia DJ Jerry Blavat, a member of the nominating committee for the rock pantheon in Cleveland and a Checker booster.
This spring, after being passed over yet again, Checker took out an ad in Billboard magazine to lay out his claim that "before Alexander Graham Bell, no telephone ... before Thomas Edison, no electric light ... before Chubby Checker, no dancing apart to the beat."
The history of rock-and-roll, he contends, can be divided into two chapters: before Chubby and after Chubby.
Before he brought "The Twist" to Philadelphia's American Bandstand, young people touched when they danced, he says. With the twist, and ever afterward, they stood apart. Oh, sure, he says, "even the caveman" probably waggled solo. But the twist was something new. It was a phenomenon.
"In two minutes and 42 seconds, we changed the world," he said the other day at his business office on Fayette Street in Conshohocken, where he markets a line of Chubby Checker products, including beef jerky and Slim Jim-type sausages.
In his hurt pride, Checker has sometimes gone over the top. He has been widely quoted as saying that if he does get into the hall of fame, he will insist on a statue out front. He has even said (with a touch of humor, one hopes) that the twist is Nobel Prize material.
And he has taken to bitterly bashing the city that made him.
He never left Philadelphia, not even at the peak of his celebrity in the '60s, when he had the most successful single of all time, part of a string of hits popularizing the dance crazes of the era, including "Pony Time" and "Limbo Rock."
Today, looking youthful and fit at 61 (but bedecked in a hairpiece on stage), he lives only a short ride up the Schuylkill Expressway from the old neighborhood. He and his wife, the former Catharina Lodders of the Netherlands (Miss World 1962), have owned the same 14 acres for 39 years. They raised their children in the burbs.
But even though Checker never left the Philadelphia area, he says he has never felt completely accepted here, either.
He rarely plays local venues and has turned down Blavat's invitations to join other city sensations - Frankie Avalon, the Orlons, the Four Jays, and the Stylistics among them - in concerts at the Kimmel Center and on public television.
"I love Chubby, and the audiences love him," Blavat said. "I think he should not be bitter towards Philadelphia, because Philadelphians love him."
Yet Blavat concedes: "You're never as popular in your hometown as you are out of town. That's the way it's always been in show business."
Hy Lit, a pioneer rock-and-roll DJ and also from Philadelphia, remembers Checker as a rocket that went oh so high. But he agrees that he had "a stronger impact out of the city." Here, he was one of many stars - the biggest, perhaps, but still one of many - who got their start on Bandstand.
Checker said he is upset that local radio stations do not play his recordings as often as he'd like. He contends he is on "limited rotation," which he regards as a sort of blacklist - never mind that even oldies stations don't play much music anymore from the pre-Beatles era.
He said the reason may be at least partly racial, even though his fan base is primarily white.
"Memphis loves Elvis - plays his music and talks about him," he said. "Liverpool loves their Beatles ... I marvel at the way Philadelphia eats its young. Where is my honor? Where is my glory? Why am I still sitting in the back of the bus?"
Blavat, Lit and Harvey Holiday, another celebrated local DJ, all agreed that Checker belongs in the hall of fame. But all expressed bewilderment at the depth of his hard feelings.
Said Holiday: "He makes more money than most of the oldies shows, the nostalgia acts. ... You've got to take your cap off to him after all these years. He's still working; he still has a band; he puts on a good show. ... He should enjoy it more."
Checker's recognition problem comes in part from the fact that he did not write "The Twist." Nor did he invent the dance.
The writer was Hank Ballard, who died in March, and who is one of 132 performers in the hall of fame. Ballard recorded it in 1958, but it never had much impact until Bandstand host Dick Clark participated in having Checker do a cover version, which he introduced to America on his daily, after-school show.
From that moment, Checker's career was spring-loaded. Bandstand, in its time, was as big an influence on pop culture as MTV would become a generation later.
"The Twist" became the only rock single ever to reach No. 1 on initial release (1960) and No. 1 in rerelease (1962).
In 1962, a poll by Gilbert Youth Research Co. found that Checker was the most popular entertainer among teenagers, beating out Elvis.
To Blavat and the other local DJs, it seems unfair that Checker may be tainted in the minds of rock-music critics by his association with Bandstand.
Harvey said: "I think a lot of people who vote for the hall of fame think Chubby had it easy because he had Dick Clark behind him."
Rock historian Richard Aquila, former host of Rock and Roll America on National Public Radio, agreed. He said Checker may also suffer from the sheer magnitude of acceptance the twist achieved.
The dance crossed from youth culture into adult culture. Upper East Side socialites were doing it at New York's Peppermint Lounge. Jackie Kennedy, of all people, was doing it.
"It's not a question of quality; it's a question of snobbery," Aquila said from Muncie, Ind., where he teaches at Ball State University. Checker, he said, "is not given enough recognition for the twist. It's hard to overestimate the cultural impact it had. ... He belongs in the hall."
Even Checker's warm-up act at Caesars, Shirley Alston Reeves of the Shirelles, was introduced to the audience as a member of the hall of fame.
"And Chubby isn't?" said fan DeFrancesco. "I can't believe that."
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Contact staff writer Tom Infield at 610-701-7622 or tinfield@phillynews.com.
Frankly, I never realized that Chubby isn't in the R&RHOF, which I visited in 1999.
foreverfree
Maybe that's why he is not in the HOF 8^).
In my opinion, Chubby deserves induction at least as much, if not more than, Billy Joel. Billy Joel? To paraphrase Groucho, any "Rock and Roll" hall of fame that inducts Billy Joel can leave me out.
Seems to me that a hall of fame should be a pantheon of the truly great, or at least groundbreaking. At the rate they're going, Tiffany, New Kids on the Block, and Helen Reddy will be joining soon...
Hy Lit was the evening jock at WIBG when it dominated Philadelphia radio in the early and mid Sixties. When Bill Drake’s new tight-playlist format (at KHJ in Los Angeles) changed rock-and-roll radio in the mid-Sixties, “Hysky” and his career went into a vertiginous oblivion. (His protégé, Bill Gardner, replaced him at “Wibbage” when Lit was fired in 1968.) He tried suicide, and then Frank Rizzo (of all people) went the extra mile to help him. He became the on-court voice of the Seventy-Sixers in the Eighties. I had heard recently that he was dying of advanced Parkinson’s Disease.
Jerry Blavat worked at a number of radio stations in the Philadelphia area and was something of a cult figure. His specialty was R&B dance music. (I met him once at a panel discussion in 1971.) When his career went into the dumper, he worked as a chauffeur for Mafia boss Angelo Bruno. (Jerry’s father, “Louie the Gimp”, was a minor Mafia soldier in the Bruno family.) The last I heard, he had turned nostalgia into a lucrative business and was making a bundle as a DJ at dances. According to a friend of mine, the people who attend Blavat’s dances are the same people who attended 40 years ago, but now their hair is grayer (or gone), and they’ve put on weight.
Harvey Holiday worked at WDAS in the Sixties when it was the key R&B station in Philly. He took over WFIL in the Eighties, replacing the legendary Jay Meyers, but long after that station had ceased to be a player.
Now I feel old.
The Moodies have been together 40 years, had many Top Tens and the smash Nights in White Satin (which had the distinction of hitting #1 again five years after its first release and climb to the top), and some of the best album work in the industry. Yet they are shunned because of some personal grudge against the drummer, Graham Edge, by certain peabrained uppity-ups in Cleveland. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Meanwhile, Moodies fans keep buying their albums, attending their incredible concerts, and boycotting the home of the river that caught fire.
and who pulled off a wonderful theme album, Days of Future Passed, long before Sgt. Pepper
Bzzzzzztttt. Sgt. Pepper came before it.
Besides, the Beatles Rubber Soul was the first theme album.
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