"[3] He began his music career in the early 1950s, singing on the Milwaukee nightclub circuit and taking his stage name after the film of the same name.

[4] He then moved to Chicago, where he worked as a sideman,[5] notably with Joe Little & his Heart Breakers and later Billy Boy Arnold.

After he underwent surgery on a pinched nerve in his neck, he developed numbness in his fingers, which affected his ability to play guitar.

In 1998, he underwent further surgery on his spine in an attempt to regain feeling in his fingers, but he died at the age of 71 after developing pneumonia.

[6] Reviewing Young's 1976 self-titled LP in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), Robert Christgau wrote: "If Young's voice weren't as gruffly workaday as his guitar, he might be a threat—he's got a knack for the blues subject, from mama-in-law to barbecue to what money can buy.