Chubby Checker

Chubby Checker was a huge recording star in the early 60s, thanks to his hit songs "The Twist," "Pony Time," "Let's Twist Again," and "Limbo Rock."





By Rick Kaempfer




In the mid-to-late 90s WJMK did a huge free concert at Lambs Farm every summer, bringing in big name Oldies acts to play for up to 100,000 people in a wonderful farm setting in Libertyville. All of the proceeds from the concessions were donated to Lambs Farm, a non-profit organization serving people with developmental disabilities. It was always our biggest event of the year.

One year we booked Chubby Checker to be one of the headliners. Chubby still does an incredible live show, and our listeners were very excited to see him.

The day before the concert, however, Chubby made an appearance on the John Landecker show. He didn't much care for getting up early, but he made an exception for us because our station was paying him a lot of money to appear in concert.

The Chubby Checker interview was our first encounter with a phenomenon we would encounter countless times during our WJMK run: Oldies-phobia.

Chubby did talk about the good old days with John for awhile, but he kept turning the conversation back to his brand new album. He was holding it in his hand, and kept telling John how good it was, asking John to play it.

"Fine," an exasperated John finally said, "What kind of music is it?"

"It's country," Chubby said.

"We're an Oldies station," John reminded him.

"But I'm not an Oldie," Chubby said. "I've got new stuff here."

I can't remember if John played any of Chubby's new album (I want to say he did play a small sample of a few songs), but I do remember what happened at the end of the interview.

John asked Chubby to record a liner for our show. You've probably heard a million of these on radio stations around the country. They usually go like this: "Hi, this is Celebrity Q, and you're listening to Radio Station X." Chubby has probably done hundreds of them over the years.

We gave Chubby a script, he read it once, and then nodded.

"OK, roll tape."

John started the tape, and Chubby read the liner. "This is Chubby Checker and you're listening to John Records Landecker on 104.3."

John thanked him, but asked him to do it one more time.

"We're actually called 'Oldies 104.3'" John said, pointing to the word on the script.

"I won't say that," Chubby replied. "See you at the concert."

He took off his headphones, and off he went.

We later ran into the same problem with Mike Love of the Beach Boys, Paul McCartney, and many others.

I'll cut both Love and McCartney some slack. After all, Paul is a Beatle, and the Beatles truly do transcend musical labels. Sure, Paul hasn't had a hit in more than twenty years, but at least he has continued to release new albums every few years, and those albums continue to sell pretty well. Nevertheless, I think it was a little weird he wouldn't say the word "Oldies."

As for Mike Love, he wouldn't even agree to be interviewed on an Oldies station because he didn't want to be associated with that label. In his defense, at least the Beach Boys had a hit with "Kokomo" in 1988. While I still think it was a stretch to consider the Beach Boys as anything other an oldies act, I could see why he didn't think so.

But Chubby Checker?

No offense, the man did a very good concert the next day and our listeners loved it, but that concert was a classic oldies act. The most recent song in his act ("Let's Do the Freddie") was released in 1965, a few weeks after the first Vietnam War demonstration in Berkley.

I mean, honestly, when he sings "Let's Twist Again like we did last summer," he's actually singing about the summer of 1960…forty-seven summers ago.

I wasn't born until three summers later.