Usually not included in the ‘best-of’ collections, Chubby Checker’s Beach Party has everyone’s favorite twister taking a crack at the popular fad of the day. After flooding the charts for most of 1961-1962 with dance crazes such as the Pony, Hucklebuck, Fly, Hitchhiker, and various editions of the Twist, Checker approaches Surfing in much of the same fashion. The point focus of this release is on the dancing surfers do when they're not riding the waves. Being an early addition to the surfing music canon, this album almost has no musical relation to the genre.

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Beach Party only has three surfing songs: 'Surf Party'- a 'live' romper, '(We're Goin') Surfin'' - a mellow rocker, and 'Let's Surf Again' - a blatant rewrite of 'Let's Twist Again' which had been a hit the year previous. Topics of the remaining 9 tracks are split between twisting ('Nothing But the Twist,'  'Twist It Up'), the limbo ('Limbo Side to Side', 'The Killer'), the bird ('Birdland Baby'), mashed potato ('Mashed Potato Love') and some others that don't fit into any discernable category ('She Said,' She's A Hippy,' 'Oo-Kook-A-Boo'). While these unrelated tracks are not necessarily bad songs, they don't exactly pertain to surfing or hot rods... or even beach parties for that matter.

 

Of all the surf-related tracks, the one that comes closest to fitting into the genre is '(We're Goin') Surfin.''

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