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“C” is for Checker, Chubby

“C” is for Checker, Chubby [b. 1941]. Singer. Chubby Checker was born Ernest Evans in Spring Gully, near Andrews, but moved to Philadelphia where he attended high school. In 1961 Checker covered the song, “the Twist.” With television exposure on American Bandstand and the Ed Sullivan Show, “The Twist” became a huge hit and remained the biggest-selling single record of all time well into the 1970s. During the 1960s Checker had thirty more chart hits. Eleven of these reached the top twenty. Other hits included “The Hucklebuck,” “Let’s Twist Again,” “The Fly,” and “Limbo Rock.” When the dance craze era ended, he remade his image several times and later repackaged himself as the rapper Chubby C. Chubby Checker has sold more than 250 million records and has appeared in at least twelve films and on numerous television shows—always playing himself.

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Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.