Kal Mann, 84; Co-Wrote ‘The Twist,’ Other Hit Songs

Kal Mann, who penned the lyrics for such 1960s hits as Chubby Checker’s signature “The Twist” and “Let’s Twist Again” and the Dovells’ “Bristol Stomp,” has died at age 84.

Mann, who worked with composers Dave Appell and Bernie Lowe, died Wednesday in his native Philadelphia of natural causes.

The lyricist began his career far from music. He wrote comedy sketches, jokes and parodies for such famed radio comedians as Danny Thomas, Red Buttons and Jack Leonard.

But in the late 1950s, he joined Lowe and Appell to co-found Philadelphia-based Cameo/Parkway Records and became a successful record producer and artists’ manager. Lowe convinced Mann that anybody who could write parodies could write lyrics for pop songs.

The songwriter, who met Chubby Checker when he was working as a singing and joking chicken plucker at a poultry shop, signed Checker to a recording contract and became his manager. With Appell, he wrote “The Twist,” which Checker rode to the No. 1 spot for 15 weeks in 1960 and another 18 weeks in 1961. Soon to follow were “Let’s Twist Again,” “Slow Twistin’ ” and “Twistin’ USA.”

The Cameo/Parkway record company maintained close ties to Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand,” also based in Philadelphia, and through that connection Mann, Lowe and Appell greatly influenced the music and the dance crazes of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Teenagers across the country copied the dance steps they saw on the television show and bought the records that Clark spun.

Shortly after making the Twist a household dance, Mann and Appell popularized “The Bristol Stomp” for the young Philadelphia group they had recently signed, the Dovells.

According to longtime member Jerry Gross, the group was working in Mann’s studio in 1961 when a promotion man named Billy Harper stopped by, raving about a “new dance they’s doing at the Good Will Fire Hall in Bristol, Pa.”

Watching him demonstrate the hop-kick-stamp-your-foot dance, Mann said, “There’s something here. We’ll call you tomorrow.”

Two days later Mann and Appell delivered the lyrics and music for “The Bristol Stomp,” with its memorable opening line, “The kids in Bristol are sharp as a pistol when they do the Bristol Stomp.”

Gross hesitated, he told the Bergen Record in 1996, saying to Mann: “Isn’t the expression, ‘Hot as a pistol?’ He said, ‘You shut up and sing. I’m the writer!’ ”

Mann and Appell also collaborated on “South Street” for the Orlons, another group in Cameo/Parkway’s impressive stable.

Among Mann’s earliest hits, was “Let Me Be Your Teddy Bear,” recorded memorably by Elvis Presley.

Mann’s other songs, some recorded by such artists as Nat King Cole, Andy Williams, Pat Boone, Dee Dee Sharp and Bobby Rydell, included “Kissin’ Time,” “Hully Gully Baby,” “Limbo Rock,” “Popeye Waddle,” “Wah-Watusi,” “Don’t Hang Up,” “Dinner With Drac” and “Wild One.”