![]() ![]() Parents moved to “forbid individually and some towns communally,” according to sociologist Marshall Fishwick. “The Twist succeeded,” Cleaver added, “as politics, religion and law could never do, in writing in the heart and soul what the Supreme Court could only write on the books.”įor a time, society reacted to the Twist revolution by applying the same policy of containment that the U.S. Soon, the fad hopped generations, sweeping up the “Mad Men” set of swinging company men and their hip-shaking wives. One “Bandstand” dancer said he was instructed to say they made up the dances on the spot, rather than admit they’d been taught by black kids.Īs Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver wrote in “Soul on Ice,” though, “The Twist was a guided missile, launched from the ghetto into the very heart of suburbia.” And if the music they were dancing to, and the dances they were doing, had been devised by black people, well, that was something to play down. Social dancing still carried a whiff of the dance halls and brothels, which is why Clark’s dancers were scrub-faced kids who looked like they’d just come from church. It was intended to be nothing more than a front for the rackets - including gambling, numbers running, loan sharking and union swindles - that Mafia capo Johnny Biello operated out of the back room.īy 1960, when Checker’s recording of “The Twist” exploded, millions of teenagers were rushing home after school each day to watch Clark’s “American Bandstand,” where kids from Philly showed off the new dances of the day. The Peppermint Lounge, where celebrities and socialites gathered for a laugh to try out the crazy new dance, was never supposed to be a hit. What most people didn’t realize at the time is that the nightspot where the craze took off, an off-Broadway dive in New York, was owned by a high-ranking member of the Genovese crime family. In the Twist, one could see the seeds of everything that became the ‘60s - sexual liberation, civil rights, even the women’s movement got a boost by allowing girls to operate as free agents on the dance floor instead of being attached to shambling males. And when adults such as Truman Capote, Marilyn Monroe and the Kennedys took up the craze, the New York Times fumed that “instead of youth growing up, adults are sliding down.” Though tame as near-beer by today’s standards, the dance so upset the guardians of public morality that Dick Clark ordered the cameras turned away when teens on “American Bandstand” started swiveling their hips. ![]() It’s been just over 50 years since a new dance craze called the Twist swept the nation. ![]()
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