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Why Chubby Checker protested outside of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Chubby Checker is something of an anomaly when it comes to the world of music. Ostensibly a musician of the 1960s, he’s had a long career that’s seen him release some big hits, but he’s a rare figure in the sense that he’s inextricably tied to one song, 1960’s ‘The Twist’. Originally written and released in 1958 by Hank Ballard & The Midnighters, it was Checker who made the song his own, complete with an iconic dance move to boot.
Whilst he also popularised the pony dance style, with the following year’s cover of ‘Pony Time’, it is Checker’s work with ‘The Twist’ that has cemented him as a pop culture legend. It’s an interesting one, as it has proven to be both a blessing and a curse, with Checker sometimes waylaid by his ties to the track, as was found in 2004 when he peacefully protested outside the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s induction festivities in Manhattan.
Checker is known for his somewhat colourful personality, and his protest was staged for a surprising reason. At the time, he maintained that he was actually alright with ‘The Twist’ not being in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but that he was annoyed that his best-known track and his new material weren’t receiving the airplay he thought they deserved.
“I’m not doing it to get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at all,” he told The Associated Press in an interview at the time. “I don’t get the airplay that one in my position deserves. ‘Twist and Shout‘ gets more airplay than ‘The Twist,’ and that’s not right.”
Interestingly, at the time of the protest, Hank Ballard had been inducted into the Hall, but Checker and the track had not, which makes you wonder if it was just a publicity stunt. Speaking on the matter, Seymour Stein, the president of the Rock Hall’s New York chapter and a key member of the committee that helps to select the inductees, said to the AP: “I think that Chubby is someone who will be considered. He has in certain years.”
Checker asserted that he didn’t want to be inducted. “It doesn’t matter at all,” he said. “They have ‘The Twist’ there already. They don’t need two in there.”
This is where it starts to get slightly strange. Although he claimed he wasn’t bothered about not being inducted, he did reveal that he wanted a photo of himself that welcomed people into the institution’s museum in Cleveland, Ohio – a request they did not listen to. “Who’s more fitting to do that than me?” he opined during the same interview.
He then proceeded to protest the perceived lack of respect the radio was showing him. He declared that ‘The Twist’ wasn’t getting the airplay it deserved on “oldies” radio stations and that he believed the radio was dismissing his latest material, such as ‘Limbo Rock Remixes’, despite it rising to No. 16 on Billboard’s Hot Dance Singles Sales chart, as Today pointed out.
“Here’s an old eagle laying new eggs, and I thought that radio would be ecstatic,” he continued. “But they’re not.”
“I’m not getting the airplay — no airplay, no payday,” Checker said, arguing that the myriad of foods using the words “twist” and “checker” indicate how popular the song still is in the contemporary world. He clarified that he hoped the airplay situation would change as his one-man protest continued outside the iconic Waldorf Astoria Hotel. “I’m really appearing on the street for musical recognition,” he concluded.
Despite the airplay situation not really changing, Checker and ‘The Twist’ were finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018.
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