When Chubby Checker’s cover version of Hank Ballard’s B-side The Twist was released in 1960, it spawned a phenomenon. The song and the dance were so popular, a flood of twist-themed records appeared over the next few years. Ergo, Brill Building songwriters Bert Berns and Phil Medley’s Shake It Up, Baby was retitled Twist and Shout.
First recorded by The Top Notes at Atlantic Studios in New York City in February 1961, it was produced — or “supervised” as it says on the disc — by a young Phil Spector, who did everything wrong, changing the rhythm and the words. This enraged co-writer Berns, who was at the session, knew he could do better and told the boy wonder so. It is a dreadful record, the only decent thing about it being a chirpy sax break in the middle.
Berns took the song to The Isley Brothers, at Wand Records. They’d had a fair hit with their self-composed “Shout” in 1959, so twisting and shouting looked a natural fit for them. They hated it. After a bad day at the studio, trying to pin down Burt Bacharach’s “Make it Easy on Yourself”, the last thing they wanted to do was a “twist” song.
Following a huge row with Berns, and with time running out, they gave in and sang it. The anger and frustration contributed to a five-star classic, Ronald Isley leading an impassioned gospel-style call-and-response with his brothers Rudolph and O’Kelly. Berns at the controls knew that all he had to do was capture the rawness of a live performance. The group still weren’t impressed, but Berns was. Released on June 16 1962, it was a hit. Ostensibly concerned with dancing and shouting, it was of course about sex, explicitly so, especially with the climactic “ahh-ahh-AHHH, shake it shake shake it baby…”
On February 11 1963, The Beatles made their first album, Please Please Me, and they’d spent a most productive 12 hours recording all but the final track: “Twist and Shout”. John Lennon sang lead, though his voice was shredded from a hard day’s singing on top of a heavy cold. Chain-smoking, drinking milk and sucking cough sweets to soothe his throat, and stripped to the waist, he had just enough in the tank to roar through the song once, in top gear. They tried a second take, but by then Lennon’s tank really was empty.
What distinguishes The Isleys and The Beatles from most other attempts — apart from the lust in the lead-singers’ voices and the backing-singers’ perfect harmonising — is the tempo. Not too fast. No need to rush. Both groups understood how to sing around the beat, rather than smack on it. They could swing. The Isleys’ record was brassy, with a lovely, Latin American tinge to a muted trumpet break in the middle; The Beatles, with two guitars, drums and bass, emulated the Isleys almost note for note, but not quite; they tweaked the riff so that it didn’t sound quite so much like a slowed-down “La Bamba”. These are the twin peaks of recordings of the song.
“Twist and Shout” has been served in all styles; Chubby Checker — Mr Twist himself — dished up a passable version in 1962, over-seasoned by some demented paradiddling from the drummer. Back in the UK, in 1963, Brian Poole and The Tremeloes offered a sturdy dollop of early-’60s British beat-boom dance-hall pop, raucous and breathlessly fast, while the following year The Searchers played it jangly, twangy and strictly on the beat. And of course too fast.
Fastest of all must be The Rivieras — April 1964 — surf-style with that beepy-boopy bubblegum stuff so popular on American pop records at the time. Tina Turner rasped and snarled her way through the song in 1965 in what was probably considered a sultry manner, though it comes across as more of a threat. Much more fun is 73-year-old Mae West’s startling rendition from 1966. Before a rocky-enough backing, she warbles and trills, occasionally making contact with the melody, and salivates her way through a very saucy “climax”. Thoroughly enjoyable.
The Mamas and the Papas sucked all life out of the song in 1967, replacing rhythm with snooze, sounding too enervated to either twist or shout. Even the magnificent Mama Cass couldn’t save this soporific mess. Later that year The Blue Things mangled a Spencer Davis rhythm, some Moody Blues harmonies and a substantial nugget of mid-’60s guitar psychedelia to create a brazen and obvious summer-of-love mish-mash that just about works.
There are more: Cliff Richard, 1968 (oompah, oompah); Showaddywaddy, 1979 (full-on yob); Bruce Springsteen, 2005, (music-to-dig-roads-by). Finally, of the surprising number of instrumental versions of a song that is so dependent on its lascivious lyric, in a 1964 release by German bandleader Max Greger, his woozy saxophone honks and lurches so discordantly against the rest of his orchestra, it could have been beamed in from another galaxy. Initially funny, soon tiresome.
What are your memories of ‘Twist and Shout’? Whose version is the best? Let us know in the comments section below.
‘The Life of a Song Volume 2: The fascinating stories behind 50 more of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Brewer’s.
Music credits: Savage Rose; Gusto Records; Music Manager; EMI Catalogue; Puzzle Productions; Stage Door; Prime Time Sounds; Rarity Music; USA Records; Fuel 2000; Isis; UMC (Universal Music Catalogue); RCA/Legacy; Parlophone UK; Edsel; RE Musik und Media
Picture credit: GAB Archive/Redferns