Gone Sixteen Months: How "The Twist" Reached Number One Twice
Most number ones behave like weather. They roll in, sit on top for a week or five, and when they go, they go for good. That's the shape of the chart. A record climbs, peaks, slides, and the slide is one-way. The whole machinery of Top 40 radio, with its fresh adds every week, is built to make sure of it.
So a song that gets to #1, loses it, and then takes it back is doing something odd. It's walking up a down escalator. In this archive it happened to 31 records between 1958 and 1990, and 30 of them managed it the ordinary way: a week or two off, a week or two back on, one rival slipping in between two halves of the same reign. Then there is "The Twist." Chubby Checker's record reached #1 in September 1960, fell away, and returned to #1 in January 1962. Not sixteen days. Nearly sixteen months.
What Two Separate Runs Actually Means
A word on the bookkeeping, because it matters. When this site says a song had two separate runs at #1, it means the chart shows the record on top, then shows something else on top, then shows the first record back on top again. Weeks at #1 get added up across both visits. "The Twist" is credited with 3 weeks at the summit, but they didn't happen together: one week in 1960, two weeks in 1962.
Usually the gap is tiny. Domenico Modugno's "Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu (Volaré)," the first record to pull this trick in the Hot 100 era, hit #1 on August 18, 1958, lost the spot for two weeks, then came back on September 1, 1958 and stayed four more. Conway Twitty's "It's Only Make Believe" did it that same autumn: one week on top on November 10, 1958, one week off, one week back on November 24, 1958. Bobby Darin's "Mack The Knife" was the heavyweight version, six straight weeks from October 5, 1959, a fortnight away, then three more starting November 23, 1959. Nine weeks all told, and it still needed two attempts.
Later decades kept the pattern. Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond's "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" went to #1 on December 2, 1978, stepped aside for a week, and returned on December 16, 1978. Kim Carnes's "Bette Davis Eyes" ran five weeks from May 16, 1981, sat out a fortnight, then came back on June 27, 1981 for four more, nine weeks in all. Chic's "Le Freak" is the list's one true freak, the only record that needed three separate trips to the top to collect its six weeks. Every one of these was a record in a live fight, trading the spot back and forth with a rival over a few weeks while both were hot.
That is not what happened to "The Twist."
September 1960
Checker was a Philadelphia kid with a good line in impressions, signed to Cameo-Parkway, the local label that fed records straight to American Bandstand across town. His first single, "The Class," a novelty built on those impressions, debuted in May 1959 and got no higher than #38. Then came "The Twist," a cover of a Hank Ballard and the Midnighters record, sung close enough to the original that you can hear the tracing paper. It debuted on the Hot 100 on August 1, 1960 and reached the top in its eighth week.
It got there on September 19, 1960, pushing out Elvis Presley's "It's Now Or Never," which had ruled for five weeks. And that, at first, was the whole story. One week. The next chart belonged to Connie Francis and "My Heart Has A Mind Of Its Own," and "The Twist" began the ordinary slide. Autumn 1960 was a jumpy stretch at the top: Larry Verne's "Mr. Custer" for a week, the Drifters' "Save The Last Dance For Me" for a week, Brenda Lee's "I Want To Be Wanted" for a week, then the Drifters again for two. Yes, "Save The Last Dance For Me" is on the comeback list too, its two runs split by a single week, which tells you how volatile that season was. By late November Elvis had the top back with "Are You Lonesome To-night?" and kept it for six weeks.
Checker, meanwhile, did what a hot Cameo-Parkway act was supposed to do. He kept the singles coming. "The Hucklebuck" reached #14 that fall. "Pony Time" gave him a second #1, a clean three-week run from February 27, 1961 through March 13. "Let's Twist Again," the sequel nobody asked for and everybody bought, peaked at #8 in the summer of 1961 and hung around for 23 weeks. "The Fly" made #7 that autumn. He was a dance-record specialist now, a dependable name with a new step every few months. And "The Twist" itself was more than a year old, which in 1961 made it an oldie.
January 1962
Then the adults found it. The broad outline is well known: by late 1961 the Twist had jumped from teenagers' basements to Manhattan nightclubs, the Peppermint Lounge above all, where society columnists reported on celebrities doing a dance that had been a kids' fad the year before. The newspapers followed, and so did the record. Not a remake, not a re-recording. The same Cameo-Parkway single started climbing all over again.
You can watch it happen in the archive. The Tokens' "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" took the top on December 18, 1961 and held it for three weeks through the holidays. On January 13, 1962, "The Twist" replaced it. Sixteen months after its first week at #1, the record was back, and this time it stayed two weeks, through January 20. Add them up and you get the 3 weeks at #1 in Checker's ledger: one plus two, with a year and a third in between.
And what took it down the second time? The Twist. Joey Dee and the Starliters' "Peppermint Twist - Part I," the house anthem from the very club that had revived the dance, moved into #1 on January 27, 1962 and stayed three weeks. The craze had grown big enough to eat its own record. Checker wasn't finished with it either: "Slow Twistin'," a duet with Dee Dee Sharp, debuted in March 1962 and peaked at #3, while "Twistin' U.S.A." and "La Paloma Twist" scraped the lower reaches. Then he moved on to the next dance. "Limbo Rock," which debuted September 8, 1962, peaked at #2 and lasted 23 weeks, and it was the closest he'd ever come to the top again. His whole career in this archive runs to 32 charting titles, two #1s and 6 weeks at the summit, tailing off through a "Back In The U.S.S.R." cover that hit #82 in 1969 and a final entry called "Running" that peaked at #91 in 1982.
Thirty-Nine Weeks
The number I keep coming back to isn't the 3 weeks at #1. It's the 39 weeks on the chart. That's the longest stay of any Checker single here by a wide margin; "Let's Twist Again" and "Limbo Rock" tie for second at 23. Among the 31 comeback #1s, only Andy Gibb's "I Just Want To Be Your Everything," at 31 weeks, comes anywhere close, and Gibb's record also owns the widest gap of the ordinary kind. Its first run ended August 13, 1977 and its second began September 17, five weeks later. Five weeks. Every other record on the list was back within a month or so. "The Twist" was gone for the better part of a year and a half.
There's a fair argument that it isn't really a comeback in the sense the others are. "Mack The Knife" and "Bette Davis Eyes" were fighting for the top and briefly lost. Checker's record had finished, gone home, and been called back to work. That's why it stands alone. The other 30 songs each tell you about a close race in one particular month. "The Twist" tells you about a country changing its mind. In 1960 it was a dance record for teenagers, worth one week. By 1962 it was a national pastime, and the chart, which has no memory and no sentiment, simply wrote that down. Same singer, same song, same single. Different America.
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