📍Fox Street, Bronx, NY 10459, USA
1962 – 1979“Joseph Saddler was born in Bridgetown, Barbados, in January 1958, and as a small child moved with his family to the Bronx. His father loved Caribbean and African American music and had a big record collection, which Joseph was told never to touch; he fell in love with it as a tot, sneaking the records out of the closet once his father had left for work. He was fascinated by how things worked, and he took apart radios, stereos and household appliances, which made him public enemy number one at home. His mother wanted him to study electronics, and he went to Samuel Gompers High School, a vocational school in the Bronx, where he learned to repair electronic equipment. In the 1970s he heard DJ Kool Herc playing the breaks of funk records at parties, and saw that the dancers loved those short drum sections best, but the breaks were too short and Herc's transitions were rough. In his parents' apartment, and later in a small apartment at 927 Fox Street in the Hunts Point section of the South Bronx, he worked out how to use two copies of the same record to repeat and extend the break precisely, cueing them by ear and marking the records, a technique he called the Quick Mix Theory. He also adapted equipment to let him hear one record while the other played. In the late 1970s he formed Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, and their 1982 song The Message described the hardship of life in the South Bronx. In 2007 they became the first hip-hop group inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The turntable became an instrument because of the boy who took apart his parents' stereo.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today