Music history of the United States in the 1960s and symphonic music, is often taken as the key recording in progressive rock, helping the widespread adoption of the genre in the early 1970s among existing blues rock and psychedelic bands, as well as newly formed acts. Chubby Checker during the early 1960s popularizes the enduring dance craze The Twist with his hit cover of Hank Ballard's R&B hit "The Twist". Gerry Goffin and Carole King become a very influential duo in pop music, writing numerous number one hits including the first song to ever reach number one by a girl group, The Shirelles "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" and
The Twist (song) Blues", sang, "Mama, mama, look at sis, she's out on the levee doing the double twist"—a reference to both sex and dancing in those days. As for this particular song, "The Twist", Hank Ballard's guitarist, Midnighters member Cal Green, said they picked up the general idea from Brother Joe Wallace of the gospel group The Sensational Nightingales, whose position and its associated image concerns prevented him from recording the song himself. Many years later, in an interview with Tom Meros that is currently available online, Midnighters' member Lawson Smith recalled the authorship of "The Twist" differently, that The Sensational Nightingales'