Earl Young, ‘the man who invented disco,’ is getting a North Philly street named after him

Earl Young is the musician with the most Philly Music Alliance Walk of Fame plaques in the sidewalk on South Broad Street.

The drummer known as “the Man Who Invented Disco” is celebrated in concrete five times. He’s immortalized, along with bassist Ronnie Baker and Norman Harris, as the rhythm section that powered the Sound of Philadelphia. Plaques note Young’s work with MFSB (Mother, Father, Sister, Brother), who played on songs produced by Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff, and Thom Bell, and the Trammps, the band he founded who had a massive hit with “Disco Inferno” in 1977. And Young is also cited for playing with Salsoul Orchestra and John Davis & the Monster Orchestra.

But that’s not the end of Earl Young’s legacy on the streets of Philadelphia.

On Wednesday, a North Philly street will be named after the musician who says he learned to play drums by “banging on four phone books taped together and two Maxwell House coffee cans.” He went on to become the driving force behind hits for the Intruders, the O’Jays, Wilson Pickett, Stylistics, Dusty Springfield, and more.

After a ceremony hosted by District 5 Councilmember Jeffery Young — no relation — from 5 to 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Firth Street between 15th and Sydenham Streets will be known as Earl Young Way.

Councilmember Young’s communications director, Yumeno Young, — also no relation — said speakers will include Philadelphia radio personality and Black Music Month founder Dyana Williams and performances by Spinners singer Ronnie Moss, as well as the Trammps with Young behind the kit.

“Mr. Young is taking a lot of personal effort in the planning,” Yumeno Young said. “He wants music going before and after the program. No hip-hop. All funk and disco.”

Earl Young Way is one of many recent renamings honoring Black music luminaries in Philly. “We’re honoring people that are alive,” Yumeno Young said.

DJs Lady B. and Patty Jackson have recently been feted, along with Will Smith. And another big name renaming is coming up when the 400 block of South Broad will become Teddy Pendergrass Way on July 26 on what would be the late singer’s 75th birthday.

Speaking from his home in Maryland where he lives with wife Sylvia, Earl Young, 85, said he grew up in foster care in North Philly, never knowing his father or mother.

He didn’t live at 15th and Firth, but chose that location — knocking on doors on the street last year to gather signatures, leading to City Council passing a unanimous resolution in May — because a woman who lived there showed compassion for him when he was a child.

Before he quit school after sixth grade to stock shelves in mom-and-pop grocery stores, Young said, he would hang out across from the M. Hall Stanton Elementary School. “Once a month, they would have parties on the street and they’d block out both ends of the street,” Young remembers.

“One day this lady pulled me aside, and said ‘Why are you looking so sad?’ I had holes in my shoes and newspaper stuffed in them. I was very poor and being in a foster home, you’re not always treated the best.”

“The lady” — her name was Orena Hunter — “used to scrub the floors at the school there, and she took me by the hand and gave me a room in her house and took care of me.”

In the 1950s, Young started out singing with doo-wop groups the Cardells and the Exceptions, the latter including Jimmy Ellis, who would later join him in the Volcanoes, the band that grew into the Trammps in the 1970s.

Playing drums “was just a natural talent I had,” said Young. He played on North Philly street corners with Baker, Harris, and guitarist Bobby Eli. When their horn player Sam Reed became bandleader at the Uptown Theater on North Broad, he brought them along.

“We used to have parties in the basement called Blue and Red Light parties. I knew all the Temptations and Jackie Wilson songs because I would dance to them.”

Then one day, he said, Wilson’s drummer didn’t show up. “And I had to play for him. Man, I was nervous.”

Later, “Jackie Wilson came backstage and said ‘You did a great job,’ and gave me a bonus. That’s when my career got going,” said Young.

His first ever recording date, in 1965 at Frank Virtue’s recording studio at 1618 N. Broad St., was for North Philly teenager Barbara Mason’s “Yes, I’m Ready.”

Released on WDAS-FM deejay Jimmy Bishop’s Arctic Records label, it hit No. 5 on the Billboard pop chart. Young was 25.

“So that was my first recording session, and I got a gold record,” he said.

It was the start of an illustrious career.

“I’ve got 70 gold albums,” he said, noting that he’s the only surviving member of the rhythm section for MFSB, who had a No. 1 pop hit in 1974 with “TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia),” which served as the theme song for Soul Train.

Also in the early 1970s, when Young toured Japan as Stevie Wonder’s drummer, he played on a Sigma Sound Studios session for “The Love I Lost,” the Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes song with Pendergrass on lead vocals.

The Gamble and Huff composition started as a ballad, but Young’s signature four-on-the-floor beat pushed it onto the dance floor. It’s now known as the first disco song.

“I used to listen to the Motown sound, the Memphis sound. I wanted to do something a little different,” said Young. “Now people think the four-on-the-floor is just the bass drum, but it’s not, because the melody comes from the hi-hat.”

That sound, with Young playing at 120 beats per minute so club DJs could seamlessly integrate it into their sets, became the foundation of disco explosion. “Disco Inferno” featured Young on bass vocals as well as drums.

But why is there an extra “M” in Trammps?

“I wanted a name that was so stupid that people would remember it,” he said. “I had the Hobos. I had Bummy & the Bums. And then I had the Tramps. People think I can’t spell. But there was a rock group called Supertramp, so I added the M.”

Young has won three Grammys and was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame in 2016. When he made it big, he made it a point to pay back Hunter, who rented her house on the Firth and North 15th Street block.

“She once said, ‘Earl, you know I would love to own this house I’m living in,’” Young said. Hunter died in 2010.

So he bought it for her, and later offered to buy her a more lavish home. “But she said ‘No, I’m satisfied here with my neighbors. I don’t want a big house’.”

Getting the street named Earl Young Way “means so much to me,” Young said.

“But I wish she was alive to see it. She was like a mother to me. And I know she’s looking down on me, and she’s very proud.”