The career of the vocalist Jimmy Ellis, who has died aged 74 after suffering from Alzheimer's disease, was ultimately defined by one song. The band he fronted, the Trammps, had other US and UK hits in the era when the lushly orchestrated soul music released on the Philadelphia International label was gradually mutating into disco, but they were all overshadowed by Disco Inferno.

The song had already been a success on the US R&B chart when it was included in a nightclub scene in the film Saturday Night Fever (1977). The soundtrack album went on to sell more than 15m copies, making it the biggest selling album of all time until the release of Michael Jackson's Thriller. Its success elevated Disco Inferno beyond hit status. When disco began to be viewed nostalgically, the track became musical shorthand for an era. It has subsequently been covered by Tina Turner, sampled by Madonna and hummed by Ricky Gervais during David Brent's infamous demonstration of his dancing technique in The Office.

Although their drummer Earl Young was credited with "inventing" the rhythm of disco – accentuating the high-hat cymbal in a way that made tracks on which he featured easier for DJs to mix seamlessly together – the Trammps' career predated the genre with which they came to be inexorably associated.

They formed in Philadelphia, the latest in a string of bands put together by Ellis, who had begun singing gospel in church as a child and had been pursuing his musical ambitions for more than a decade – first in his home town of Rock Hill, South Carolina, and then in New Jersey, while he was working as a gardener and a chauffeur. Their 1972 debut single, a cover of Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart, revealed their roots as doo-wop-influenced street-corner harmony vocalists and their alignment with the heavily orchestrated "Philadelphia sound" that was about to supplant Motown as the dominant force in black music. It was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic, but their next singles failed to replicate its success and they parted company with their record label, Buddah.

Their eponymous 1975 album was released on a short-lived label founded by Young, Ronnie Baker and Norman Harris, who also formed a formidable production team. One track, the prosaically titled Trammps Disco Theme, pointed to the band's future direction. The following year's That's Where the Happy People Go dispensed with ballads, aiming its contents directly at the dance floor. Hold Back the Night and the title track both became hits.

But it was the title track of their next album, Disco Inferno, that was to prove the Trammps' definitive recording. Written by their keyboard player Ron "Have Mercy" Kersey and Leroy Green, the track, like a lot of disco, was simultaneously a novelty record – alluding to the 1974 disaster movie The Towering Inferno – and a rather more complex song than its glossy, radio-friendly exterior suggested. Depending on whose story you believe, the refrain "burn, baby, burn" was coined either by a 60s soul DJ called Magnificent Montague or in a street-corner speech given by the Maoist agitator William Epton during the Harlem riots of 1964. Either way, it came to national attention in the US during the 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles.

The record producer Tom Moulton claimed to have set the mixing desk's noise reduction levels incorrectly while working on the 10-minute-long track, inadvertently giving it a more dynamic and powerful sound that was complemented by Ellis's roaring lead vocal.

The Trammps' chart career was short-lived. A year after the soundtrack spent 24 weeks at the top of the US charts, their album The Whole World's Dancing struggled to No 184, despite a guest performance from Stevie Wonder. It was their last chart appearance.

If their entanglement with disco curtailed the Trammps' lifespan on the charts, it undoubtedly prolonged their live career. Ellis would tour with a version of the band for the next 30 years, until his diagnosis with Alzheimer's in 2008. Two years later, he made a final appearance with the band in Atlantic City, where he had performed in talent contests five decades previously.

He is survived by Beverly, his wife of 46 years; his children, Erika and Jimmy; three brothers and a sister; and eight grandchildren.

• James Thomas Ellis, singer, born 15 November 1937; died 8 March 2012