Music
Hank Ballard
1927–2003 · singer, songwriter
Detroit-born leader of the Midnighters, a Ford assembly-line worker turned rock and roll pioneer who wrote and first recorded “The Twist.”
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
Los Angeles, California
aged 75- Birth name
- John Henry Kendricks
- Detroit years
- 1927–1930s, 1940s–1950s
- Field
- Music
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Hank Ballard was born John Henry Kendricks in Detroit in 1927. After his father's death he and his brother grew up in Bessemer, Alabama, but he returned to Detroit as a teenager and went to work on a Ford assembly line. In 1953 he joined the Royals, a Detroit doo-wop group that Johnny Otis had discovered and brought to Federal Records, a division of Cincinnati's King Records. Ballard's raw, bluesy songs changed the group: “Get It” and especially “Work with Me, Annie” were big R&B hits even as some radio stations refused to play their suggestive lyrics. Renamed Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, the group scored again in 1959–1960. Ballard wrote and first recorded “The Twist” as a B-side in 1959; Chubby Checker's cover turned it into a national dance craze. Florence Ballard of the Supremes was his cousin. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.
Highlights
- Worked on a Ford assembly line before his music career
- Joined the Detroit group the Royals (later the Midnighters) in 1953
- “Work with Me, Annie” (1954) was a No. 1 R&B hit
- Wrote and first recorded “The Twist” (1959)
- Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 1990; Michigan Rock and Roll Legends, 2010