Put on your dancing shoes because we’re starting a week of dancing songs at the Classic Song of the Day blog. First up is Mary Chapin Carpenter’s feisty “Down at the Twist and Shout,” a Cajun-flavored number that was a big country hit in 1992. It rose all the way to #2 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart and won a Grammy for Best Country Vocal Performance, Female. “Down at the Twist and Shout” was also nominated for Song of the Year by the Academy of Country Music Awards. (It lost to Billy Dean’s “Somewhere My Broken Heart.”)
Mary Chapin Carpenter recorded the song with the help of Cajun band BeauSoleil, who are also namechecked in the song’s lyrics, which detail a fun evening dancing at a club called the Twist and Shout:
Saturday night and the moon is out
I wanna head on over to the Twist and Shout
Find a two-step partner and a Cajun beat
When it lifts me up I’m gonna find my feet
Out in the middle of a big dance floor
When I hear that fiddle, wanna beg for more
Wanna dance to a band from a-Lou’sian’ tonight
The song is a real toe tapper, complete with accordion and fiddle and an irresistible Cajun two-step beat. It doesn’t get much more fun that this.
“Down at the Twist and Shout” was written by Mary Chapin Carpenter and included on her album Shooting Straight in the Dark. It was her seventh top twenty country hit, the list of which includes songs like “Never Had it So Good,” “Quittin’ Time,” “I Feel Lucky,” “Passionate Kisses,” “He Thinks He’ll Keep Her,” “I Take My Chances,” “Tender When I Want to Be,” and the number-one country hit, “Shut Up and Kiss Me.”
As you can tell, Ms. Carpenter was a big deal in the country music world during the late ’80s and ’90s. She was kind of a rarity in Nashville, an intelligent woman writing and performing thoughtful, often introspective songs. That probably contributed to her being relegated to the sidelines during the bros and beers era of 21st century country music, even though she’s still out there performing and recording today, although mainly as a solo folk artist. Her most recent studio album was 2020’s Dirt and Stars; she also released a live album in 2021, One Lonely Night, which was nominated for the Best Folk Album Grammy in 2022.
