Hank Ballard: Midnight Man

HANK BALLARD is most often remembered as the man who wrote ‘The Twist’ but lost out to Chubby Chucker as the populariser of the dance craze that swept America in the early Sixties. This hardly does him justice for Ballard was the creative originator of the ‘Annie’ saga of rhythm and blues hits which provided a foretaste of the sort of street-level popularity versus reactionary public controversy that surrounded the emergence of many later rock stars.