45s.com -- Recording Artist Information: Hank Ballard and The Midnighters

Date Formed	1952
Location	Detroit, Michigan
	Disbanded in 1965
Music	R&B Vocal Group
Charted Pop/Rock Hits	13
Period Active	March 9, 1959 to 1962
Biggest Hits	"Let's Go, Let's Go, Let's Go" and "Finger Poppin' Time."
Music List and Data	Search Music List
Notable Information	Hank Ballard was born on November 18, 1936.  Ballard wrote and had the first recording of the biggest rock and roll song ever -- "The Twist."   Hank Ballard was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.
Original Members	Hank Ballard, Charles Sutton, Lawson Smith, and Sonny Woods.
Other Names	The Royals (1952)
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Hank Ballard was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.  The following information was obtained from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:

Hank Ballard is chiefly remembered for recording a trilogy of risque R&B numbers: "Work With Me, Annie," "Annie Had a Baby" and "Annie's Aunt Fannie." Yet Ballard's contribution to rock and roll goes much deeper than that. With the grinding guitars, distorted sound and fervid call-and-response of those and many other recordings made for the King and Federal labels, Ballard helped define the sound of rock and roll. He also ushered forth one of its greatest dance crazes, having written and first recorded "The Twist." By the early 1960s, he'd charted 22 singles on the R&B charts, including "Work With Me, Annie," which was the biggest R&B hit of 1954. It sold more than a million copies and spawned more than 20 answer records (including Etta James' "Roll with Me Henry").

 The Detroit-born Ballard was working on a Ford Motor Company assembly line when he joined the Royals, a local singing group. In a short time they moved from the smooth delivery of sentimental material to a more lascivious and bluesy approach, as evidenced by their earliest hits, "Get It" and "Work With Me, Annie." The Royals followed "Annie" with "Sexy Ways," by which time they'd changed their name to the Midnighters in order to avoid confusion with the "5" Royales. Ballard wrote and recorded "The Twist" with the Midnighters in 1958, but their record label relegated it to a B side, leaving it to Chubby Checker to take "The Twist" to Number One not once but two times, in 1960 and 1962. Hank Ballard and Midnighters continued to record deep blues and infectious, undiluted R&B such as "Finger Poppin' Time" and "Let's Go, Let's Go, Let's Go" into the early Sixties. Although the Midnighters' recording career lost steam in the wake of Motown, the British Invasion and other developments on the contemporary front, they subsequently made a decent living playing nightclubs and frat parties, finally disbanding in 1967.