See which famous Philadelphians will be inducted into this year’s Philly Music Walk of Fame

The Philadelphia Music Alliance has a big Wednesday planned on Broad Street.

Plaques immortalizing the 2025 honorees will be unveiled in front of the Suzanne Roberts Theatre at noon, followed by a gala at Vie that evening that will feature entertainment by the Hooters and singing lineman Jordan Mailata of the Philadelphia Eagles.

Mailata will be presented with a special “Philadelphia Award” for the charity-raising efforts of the Philly Specials’ three holiday albums.

Bob Geldof, the instigator behind the 1985 African famine relief Live Aid concerts in Philadelphia and London will be honored as the concerts’ 40th anniversary approaches in July.

Three Philadelphia jazz clubs that thrived in the post-World War II era will be honored with their owners: Herb Spivak of the Showboat, and the late Jack Goldenberg and Ben Bynum of Pep’s and Cadillac Club, respectively.

» READ MORE: Trailblazing jazz clubs — Cadillac Club, Pep’s Musical Bar, and the Showboat — to be honored on the Philadelphia Music Alliance Walk of Fame

Walk of Fame honors were last given in 2023, and before that, 2019. But Music Alliance founder Larry Magid says that going forward, the Walk of Fame will be expanding down South Broad Street and there will be new inductees every year. Existing plaques will be replaced with new ones equipped with QR codes to educate fans about artists’ careers.

These seven Philly artists and institutions are being honored with plaques for the 2025 Walk of Fame on Wednesday.

A legendary Philadelphia DJ who has retained his relevance over a 54-year career, Dye started at rock station WMMR-FM (93.3) in 1970, while a 19-year-old student at Swarthmore. In his Born to Run memoir, when Bruce Springsteen titled a chapter “A Deejay Saved My Life,” he was referring to Dye, who served stints at WIOQ-FM in Philly and at a rock station in Maine before joining WXPN-FM (88.5) in 1989. Here, his “friendly presence” and boundless musical curiosity has served listeners well ever since. Dye, who was inducted into the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia Hall of Fame in 2023, created XPN’s World Cafe and hosted it for 26 years before he stepped down as host in 2017. His retirement has been a busy one as his Sunday morning free-form show Dave’s World is still two of the most vital weekly hours on the Philadelphia radio dial.

At 14, Janis Ian wrote “Society’s Child,” a precocious song about interracial romance that thrust her into the 1960s folk spotlight and made a fan out of Leonard Bernstein, among others.

The story of the long career that followed, including her biggest hit, 1975’s “At Seventeen,” is told in a new documentary, Breaking Silence. Ian grew up in Central Jersey but lived in Philly for much of the 1970s when she regularly played the Philadelphia Folk Festival and the Main Point in Bryn Mawr. In 2008, she told the Daily News’ Jonathan Takiff that Philadelphia “was where I learned to be a real writer … it really was my second home,” and that returning to the Folk Fest “is still like going back in time. It was a seminal place in my life.”

An R&B group named after a synthetic fabric, the Orlons’ most memorable hit was a 1963 song that could hardly be more Philly iconic. Written by Kal Mann and Dave Appel, it asked the musical question: “Where do all the hippest meet?”

The answer, of course, is “South Street.” The group recorded for the Cameo label in the American Bandstand era with a classic lineup that included one male singer, Stephen Caldwell, now 82, and three female vocalists, lead singer Rosetta Hightower, Shirley Brickley, and Marlena Davis, all deceased. The quartet also had hits with “The Wah-Watusi” and “Don’t Hang Up.”

“PSK? What Does It Mean?” That was the title of West Philly rapper Schoolly D’s 1985 single that’s considered to be the first gangsta rap song. The initials stand for Parkside Killas, a West Philly gang. The rapper born Jesse Weaver’s signature sound — with the aid of DJ Code Money — was jittery, reverb drenched, and profoundly influential on gangstas-to-be like Ice-T and N.W.A. He was sampled by post-punk acts like Siouxsie & the Banshees. Weaver went on to work extensively with movie director Abel Ferrara and make music for the Cartoon Network show Aqua Teen Hunger Force. His lyrics from “Gucci Time,” also from 1985, asks a timeless question that’s yet to be answered: “Schoolly School, how the f— did you get to be so cool?”

Ludwig is dean and director of music at New York’s Juilliard School, but his Philadelphia roots run deep. The Bucks County native attended the Curtis Institute of Music from 1997 to 2001, and has held numerous titles at the school, including dean and chair of composition studies.

Ludwig has written music for both the concert hall and film. His Fanfare for Sam, premiered in 2011 by the Curtis orchestra, celebrates his predecessor at Curtis, Samuel Barber. It starts by emulating an orchestra tuning up, then moves into the opening B flat of Barber’s Adagio for Strings, and ends on a C major chord — a C for Curtis. Ludwig, 52, has another significant Curtis connection: his grandfather was famed pianist Rudolf Serkin, the school’s director in the 1960s and ’70s.

The induction of the school founded in 1908 by Jeannette Selig Frank and Blanche Wolf Kohn is an acknowledgment “of its role in nurturing the talent that makes Philadelphia a vibrant music city.” Settlement, which has campuses in South, West, and Northeast Philly, as well as in Germantown and Willow Grove, has seen a mind boggling list of artists and luminaries come though its doors. That includes Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Christian McBride, Chubby Checker, Joey DeFrancesco, Kevin and Michael Bacon, Lady Alma Horton, Byard Lancaster, and author Lorene Cary. From the classical world, film composer Alex North, pianist Leon Bates, tenor Mario Lanza, and opera diva Wilhelmenia Fernandez. And oh yeah, Albert Einstein and former Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo. Settlement CEO Helen Eaton will accept the award.

The late great composer and lyricist and re-inventor of the American musical, whose long list of credits includes West Side Story, Gypsy, Merrily We Roll Along, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Into the Woods, grew up in New York and died in Connecticut in 2021. So why’s he going into the Philadelphia Music Walk of Fame? Because he went to the George School, the private Quaker prep school in Bucks County, where he wrote his first musical, By George. Sondheim also maintained strong ties with Philadelphia’s Arden Theatre Company throughout his life.

Inquirer Classical Music Critic Peter Dobrin contributed to this article.