From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-When Mister Chubby Checker Saved The Whole Wide World

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Mister Chubby Checker performing his immortal The Twist.

CD Review

The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era: 1960: Still Rockin’, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1989  

What did Peter Paul Markin, hard scrabble out of  suburban Boston Adamsville, Massachusetts, eighteen and girl crazy, Joshua Lawrence Breslin, nineteen, and girl crazy too out of Olde Saco up in rural Maine and Johnny (Blaze) Bachman, also nineteen out of Avon, Connecticut, ditto on the girl crazy, have in common in great fear 1960 night. No, not fear that they would not live long enough to see the world (crooked metaphor for figuring out what to do about girl crazies) what with the red scare cold war world champing down on them. They figured they would get by. Nix too on trying to get dough together to take a leap into that good hitchhiking on the road night. That would come, come six ways to Sunday. And you are totally off base if you thought they had worries about the “what if” of college (if these restless boys decided to go rather than hit that search for the blue-pink great American West night (or some night) road.     

No, what they had in common, girl 101 in common, desperately girl 101 in common, was that, try might or main, they all had two left feet. Hey, they couldn’t dance, okay. And couldn’t dance in the 1960 hot summer wind a-blowing night meant, meant, sitting home alone by the old midnight telephone, the no ring telephone. Or hanging out with compadre also ran guys who couldn’t dance come Friday or Saturday night school or church hop (quaint) in front of respectively North Adamsville, Olde Saco, and Avon Central High or some low rent diner putting quarters in the jukebox wishing their lives away.       

A shame too, particularly for Johnny Blaze, an Adonis blonde, blue-eyed figure out of Jack Kerouac’s be-bop Denver All-American boy Neal Cassady, a pin- ball wizard who could put an car engine back together blind-folded (and did one sleepy Avon night just to show his corner boys his stuff)  or while reading Marcel Proust (not done since they knew not of the Frenchman, or of remembrances ) with a souped-up Dodge just waiting for some desperate chicken run to prove his metal, a few bucks and, well, stuck with some lonely corner boys in similar condition.

But just that year just that exact 1960 year if you couldn’t dance, couldn’t bop the bop, do lang do lang, sha na na your way around the floor then boss car, dough, or Adonis looks put you on cheap street, way down on cheap street with busted, inconsequential dreams. The edge, no question.1958 or 1959 and Johnny would have been a girl magnet and home free. Every night with whomever he wanted down on that Long Island Sound, bopping the night away (metaphor for, hell, you know, the deed). 1960 though Mister Lonely-heart.

It wasn’t like Peter Paul, Josh or mad monk Johnny hadn’t tried, hadn’t watched about sixty-six, or was it six hundred and sixty-six episodes of American Bandstand, hadn’t  given serious thought to going to Miss So-and-So’s Dance School, or anything like that. (Josh even, under a veil of national security cold war treason death penalty secrecy, had his younger sister, his younger sister for god’s sake, try to teach him but two left feet are two left feet.) Nor was the goal to be able to sweet and low slow dance, some fox trot or waltz last dance school Could This Be Magic dance. Or intricate jitterbug moves, but just be in synch dance with a partner, a female partner without looking like a chicken for two minutes and some change. Nada, nothing. There was a little hope when in 1958 the Stroll came breezing through for a minute but after a couple of times the girls would pair off by themselves, by themselves if you can believe that, rather than run the gauntlet with our three young heroes. Sad story, sad ending to the boy meets girl world historic saga.              

Then came Chubby Checker, then came the Twist, and you do it like this, and two left (or right) feet didn’t matter because all you had to do was gyrate and be on the same dance floor and our young Adonis boys sure as hell knew how to gyrate. Hail King Chubby, hail.