Chubby Checker Twists Away at Free Santa Barbara Block Party

The Man Who Taught America How to Shake It Comes to Town

Chubby Checker Twists Away
at Free Santa Barbara
Block Party

The Man Who Taught America
How to Shake It Comes to Town

By Nick Welsh | May 18, 2023

Ernest Evans, a k a Chubby Checker (left) and Earl Minnis | Credit: Courtesy, Ingrid Bostrom

Sir Isaac Newton was just 23 when he discovered the law of gravity to which none of us, no matter how airborne, are immune. That was in 1666. Albert Einstein was 26 when he “discovered” his general theory of relativity, still unfathomable to most people 118 years later. 

It would be a cherubically plump, fresh-faced 17-year-old African American singer named Ernest Evans who helped White Americans, by electrifying its youth and awakening its elders to the fact that they’d been endowed by their creator with both hips and ass, not to mention the inalienable joy that comes from shaking both.

This discovery occurred in the summer of 1960.

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