Chubby Checker's Influence on Euro-pop and schlager

Schlager music as a distinctly Germanic genre was, in no small way, a nationalistic reaction to the infiltration of foreign -- particularly American and British -- popular culture.

Still, the ubiquitous American pop music managed to infuse itself into Germania. This most notably happened in the person of 60s American pop icon, Chubby Checker.

Born in the backwash of Spring Gulley, South Carolina and raised in the public housing projects of Philadelphia, Checker took the pop world by storm with his 1960 dance craze megahit, "The Twist."

The tune skyrocketed to #1 on the US charts that year and spawned a worldwide dance craze. It is the only pop song in history to have worked its way to #1 on the Billboard top 100 chart in two distinct years -- 1960 and again in 1962.

Checker had a number of sequel hits, notably "Let's Twist Again" and "Twistin' USA" in 1961, "Slow Twistin'" in 1962 and "Twist it up" in 1963.

He also spawned imitators including "The Peppermint Twist" which hit #1 for Jody Dee and the Starlighters.

But by 1964 America was ready for something new -- it was all twisted out, you might say -- and it embraced the more sophisticated rock sounds of the British invasion, spearheaded by the Beatles.

Checker had been so typecast by his association with the Twist craze that he was unable to readily gain popular credence as he tried to adapt to new sounds and by '64 he was pretty much washed up in the US market.

That same year, Checker married a Dutch woman, the former Miss Universe, Katherina Lodders, and pulled up stakes for Germany. There he jump-started his career with a number of twist-styled hits sung in German, including "Autobahn Baby," "Twist doch 'mal mit mir" (This Time Twist with me),"Der Twist Beginnt," (The Twist Begins - to the tune of Let's Twist Again.)

So profound was Checker's popularity in the German and other European markets that his influence can be found there even today -- and even in the schlager genre.

Here Austrian international ski champ and schlager star, Hansi Hinterseer sings his late 90s hit, "The Ski Twist" with Germans twisting in the background:



Here Croatian pop sensation (and now a US citizen)Tajči sings her 1990 hit- Moj mali je opsana (My little dangerous one) with Croatian words set to Chubby Checkers' "Let's Twist Again":



And here is Chubby Checker, the man who started it all, singing,"Der Twist Beginnt," (The Twist Begins - to the tune of Let's Twist Again), during the German expatriate phase of his career: