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.
