This is the latest from The Bluesmobile’s C.C. Rider, who spends her life venerating the founding fathers of the blues. She’s walked the crooked highways of this singing country to resurrect the voices of the past. With the dirt of the Delta on her hands, she sleeps in the shadow of the giants on whose shoulders popular music now stands.
Hank Ballard
(November 18, 1927 – March 2, 2003)
The Twist. One of Rock n’ Rolls biggest hits. Gave birth to a dance phenomenon. Been called the song and dance that changed the world. And when Chubby Checker performed the Twist on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand in 1960, suddenly everyone was twisting. Chubby Checker’s best known for it…but he wasn’t the original twsiter. That honor goes to Detroit-born Hank Ballard. He wrote the song, and recorded it first.
A real, raw, R&B star, full of such sex and swagger, his tracks were often banned from the radio. Hard to believe this was considered risqué…Ballard’s bawdy, high intensity songs influenced a generation of musicians after him. Here’s a Hank Ballard song you may know from Stevie Ray Vaughan’s version. Check it out. Hank Ballard and the Midnighters with “Look at Little Sister.”
