Cc Checker Live
Veronica Donkin
Checker was born Ernest Evans in Spring Gully, South Carolina.[2] He was raised in the projects of South Philadelphia, where he lived with his parents, Raymond and Eartle Evans,[3] and two brothers.[4] By age eleven, Evans formed a street-corner harmony group. By the time he entered high school, Ernest had learned to play the piano a little at Settlement Music School. He entertained his classmates by performing vocal impressions of popular entertainers of the day, such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley and Fats Domino.[5] One of his classmates and friends at South Philadelphia High School was Fabian Forte, who would become a popular performer of the late 1950s and early 1960s as Fabian.[4]
After school Evans would entertain customers at his various jobs, including Fresh Farm Poultry in the Italian Market on Ninth Street and at the Produce Market, with songs and jokes. It was his boss at the Produce Market, "Tony A.", who gave Evans the nickname "Chubby". The owner of Fresh Farm Poultry, Henry Colt, was so impressed by the boy's performances for the customers that he, along with his colleague and friend Kal Mann, who worked as a songwriter for Cameo-Parkway Records,[6] arranged for young Chubby to do a private recording for American Bandstand host Dick Clark. At this recording session Evans got his stage name from Clark's wife, who asked Evans what his name was. "Well," he replied, "my friends call me 'Chubby'." As he had just completed a Fats Domino impression, she smiled and said, "As in Checker?" That little play on words ("chubby" relating to "Fats" just as "checkers" relates to "dominoes," a tabletop game) got an instant laugh, and stuck: from then on, Evans would use the name "Chubby Checker".[7][8]
Checker introduced his version of "The Twist" at the age of 18 in July 1960 in Wildwood, New Jersey at the Rainbow Club. "The Twist" went on to top the Billboard Hot 100 not just once in 1960, but yet again in a separate chart run in late 1961. The first success was attributed to teens, and the unprecedented second number-one Billboard ranking was driven by older audiences following a spirited live performance[11] of the song by Checker on The Ed Sullivan Show, seen by over 10 million viewers.[12] (Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" had also achieved number one twice on Billboard's earlier chart.)
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