Chubby Checker ready to twist at the Fox

“We come to town. We bring the fire. We set it on fire and burn it down and go home,” the legendary singer of the No. 1 hit of all time— “The Twist” — said in late October, as the leaves were changing colors on the trees outside his Philadelphia office. “I’m coming to your town to blow it up. We’re going to have a good time.”

His Nov. 12 show at the Fox, 17 W. Congress St., is his first in Tucson in more than a decade. And in that time, Checker has been penciled into pop culture history books when Billboard named his 1960 version of Frank Ballard’s “The Twist” the No. 1 song of all time.

“I have something that’s unique in all the world: I have the No. 1 song of all time in the world and it will be No. 1 until 2063,” he said. Billboard tapped the song in 2013 and Checker says it will be another 50 years before the magazine makes its next “all time” declaration.

“I won’t be here the next time they nominate a song to be ‘the song of all time,’” he joked. “But it won’t be the first ‘song of all time’; it’ll be the second.”

So what else have we missed in Checker’s absence?

He gave us some insight on what to expect next week at the Fox.

Honesty and excitement: “Once we get there … we make them have a good time. We make them remember. And also the people who have never seen me before, they leave thrilled because when they go to see their people” — contemporary artists — “they don’t see that kind of excitement that we put out there. They don’t see that same kind of sincerity, that honesty.”

Yes, he still loves performing “The Twist”: “When I go out an do ‘The Twist,’ I always imitate Chubby Checker. I get into my thought bag and my imaginary place where I live, where people have all their imaginations, and I go into my little file there and pluck out Chubby Checker and say, ‘Come on, Chub, I want to be just like you or better.’ And when I sing that song for every note, it sounds just like it did back then.”

But performing the twisty dance moves don’t feel like they did back then: “It’s different. It’s not as easy as it was back then. There are less movements, but I can tell you this much: When you look at Chubby Checker on stage, imagine a 1960 Corvette with a 1969 Corvette engine and when we get on the racetrack with the other guys, we kick just as much butt. That’s what we do. … I don’t believe many people from the 1960s can perform with the rockers of the 1980s, 90s and 2000s like Chubby Checker can. … And I want to bring all that excitement to Tucson. I would like not to see an empty seat and I want people to realize excitement is coming to town.”

“Twisting” his way past generational roadblocks: “When you go to Disney World, the people you see there, that’s what you see at my show. There are (fans) in their 70s and their children who are in their 40s and they are coming with their children to see me. I’ve been performing since before I left high school. I graduated in 1960 and my career begin in 1959. I was in 11th grade when all of this stuff happened. And it’s amazing that I’m in shape and I’m healthy enough to go out there and really perform. The car doesn’t go 150 anymore, but it goes 130, and we still do well.”