Your Twist Party

AMG Review of Your Twist Party

Joe Viglione
All Music Guide

Your Twist Party is an interesting and fun album from Chubby Checker, starting off with his classic rendition of Hank Ballard's "The Twist," and continuing with "twist"-style arrangements of popular tunes of the era. Fats Domino's "Blueberry Hill" gets the same treatment as Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" -- sung "Twist around the clock" here. Picture the Ramones giving their trademark power-chord treatment to cover songs their fans could identify with, and you get the spirit at play on Your Twist Party. "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" gets a "twist" mutation, while Chubby adds some Big Bopper/Jerry Lee Lewis ad libs to Kal Mann's "Mister Twister." Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog" receives a nice modulation -- and an adaption as well -- "You ain't nothing but a hound dog/twistin' all the time/little sister you're a twister and you ain't no friend of mine." Mann & Appell create the "Mexican Hat Twist" out of the "Mexican Hat Dance," just as Kal Mann may have inspired the Beach Boys with his "Twistin' U.S.A." (years before the Fat Boys brought a common denominator to both camps by charting on separate occasions with Chubby and the Beach Boys ). Lerner & Loewe's "I Could Have Danced All Night" works remarkably well in this format, and is a highlight of this collection. Though the obsession with the dance craze may be a bit much, this is also the record's charm, and the album features three of Checker's biggest songs with "Let's Twist Again," "The Hucklebuck," and "The Twist," while giving a sly nod to the singer's first hit from 1959, "The Class," where he imitated some of the people he covers here.