The Loco-Motion

August 1962

I'm not really sure how to "do the locomotion," but to be honest, it doesn't really matter. Thanks to songwriters Carole King and Gerry Goffin, a singer named Little Eva achieved her 15 minutes of fame, and America had another dance craze on its hands.



This is one of those songs that I heard tons of times growing up, since it was a staple of oldies radio (it's amazing how many of these songs aren't, considering their former popularity). It's a super catchy and very fun song, quite simple, and helped along by a stomping backbeat that isn't too far from the one in "The Twist." This is the Carole King most people don't think of when they hear her name. In fact, the song has such an enduring appeal that it has reached the top ten in three different decades, performed by three different artists. I'll talk about the cover versions in another post, since one of them reached, you guessed it... number one! (I'll give you a hint who sings it—it starts with "G,"and ends with "rand Funk Railroad.")

"The Locomotion" was Little Eva's only big hit, and the rest of her career is not really worth mentioning. But there is something else related to her that is notorious, and I can't pass up discussing it here. Eva apparently provided the inspiration for another lesser-known King/Goffin song, performed by a different group, the Crystals (whom we will get to soon enough on this blog). The story goes that King and Goffin had somewhat of a personal relationship with Eva. When they saw her one day, she had been battered by her boyfriend, and was badly bruised. When, instead of being angry, she expressed feelings of forgiveness and devotion to him, the songwriters were inspired to write what is, in my opinion, one of the most deeply disturbing pieces of music in popular history.



When Slayer sang about Auschwitz in the 80s, it was with a wry smirk, and an obvious intention to shock. In contrast, "He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss)" is fascinatingly devoid of any discernible irony whatsoever. It is so unsettling a song that I can hardly believe it actually exists. The pounding, hypnotic rhythm and weird, chanting backup vocals build with the lush orchestration to produce a bleakly dark, almost nightmarish effect. In case you were wondering, Phil Spector is the producer on this; perhaps in retrospect, it's not surprising he was drawn to the song, given his own sordid history.

Lest we think "oh those were different times in the 60s," it's important to note that the single was pulled soon after its release due to public objection. I would imagine it's quite hard these days to find an original 45 of this song, but thanks to the Internet it is immortal.

All that aside, this post is supposed to be about "The Loco-Motion," so—

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Pony Time

February–March 1961

One sure way to know that a dance craze hasn't stood the test of time – I can't find a single video on the web of someone doing the "pony." However, I'm sure that 50 years ago it wasn't too hard to find someone doing the dance, as Chubby Checker's song was #1 for three weeks.



You may have noticed that this song is exactly the same as "The Twist." Except he took out the word "twist" and replaced it with "pony." I can't say I'm thrilled about this one, especially since I have no idea what the dance even looks like. I found a description of the steps here, but I'm not about to parse through that tome and figure out what it means.

This was Checker's second and final #1 single, although he would continue to crank out Top 40 hits for the next few years. Browsing through the titles, almost all of them appear to be either attempts at starting a dance craze – "Dance the Mess Around," "The Fly," "Limbo Rock" – or extensions of the twist – "Let's Twist Again," "Slow Twistin'," "Twist It Up."

Talk about a one-trick... pony!

Oof. Sorry about that one. But really, this is the mark of someone who didn't have a lot of talent, but managed to strike it big with one lucky recording. Where someone truly talented would have continued to create new and original things, Checker merely rode out the success of "The Twist" as far as he could, until he was absolutely sure the public didn't care about him anymore. His last hit, "Let's Do the Freddie," barely scraped the Top 4o in 1965 – and I don't have to hear it to know that it's a semi-failed attempt at yet another dance craze. I'll happily acknowledge that "The Twist" is a great song, but, like so many great things, it inspired countless weak imitations.

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The Twist

September 1960 & January 1962

Ah, "The Twist" – the biggest dance craze of all time, and the one that arguably had the most lasting impact. Who could forget it? It's so ridiculously simple that it's amazing nobody had thought of it before.

As you probably could have guessed, Chubby Checker didn't invent the Twist – in fact, he wasn't even the first one to have a hit single with the song. That would be Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, whose version is curiously unavailable on Youtube. And people have dated the dance back much farther, back through plantation dances and even farther back to Africa. But what matters is that it exploded into popular culture in 1960, and you could say it never really went away.

After all, the concept of rhythmically "twisting" your hips back and forth, well – isn't that the basic idea behind dancing in nightclubs today? Is it a stretch to say that the Twist permanently changed the way people dance? Moving one's hips seems such a fundamental part of dancing (at least in the popular idiom) that it's hard to believe there was a time when it wasn't done. Look back on dancing footage from before the 60s – people don't swivel their hips unless it's a burlesque show or something. And so I can imagine how it must have felt for this to suddenly become socially acceptable. Liberating, I suppose. This song came along at just the right time – people were ready for it. Any earlier and it might have been dismissed as grotesque. Not that the parents didn't find it objectionable, or at least some of them. Apparently, it was controversial at the time for being overtly sexual. And well, I guess it is. Isn't that the point?

And yes, those are two different dates up there in the title of this post. "The Twist" is, in fact, the only song ever to do this – reach #1 on two separate chart runs. Not to mention the numerous Twist-themed songs Chubby Checker churned out in the following few years – "Let's Twist Again," "Twistin' U.S.A.," "Slow Twistin'," and "Twist It Up" were all charting singles. Even as late as 1964, the Beatles nearly topped the chart with their cover of the Isley Brothers' "Twist and Shout." That's four years later – an eternity!

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