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Chris Willman
Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic
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Getty Images Donnie Iris, regarded as Pittsburgh’s biggest hometown rock hero for a six-decade career that included hit singles in the 1960s and ’80s, died Monday at 83. He had been fighting bladder cancer for three years.
Iris’ biggest chart success came as a member of the Jaggerz, who reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1970 with “The Rapper” — a song that dealt with “rapping” with girls, not the genre whose name had not yet been coined.
That group petered out, but he went on to have continued success, especially regionally, as the frontman of Donnie Iris and the Cruisers in the age of power pop and Midwest rock. A decade after “The Rapper” broke through, Iris had a hit again with “Ah! Leah!,” which reached No. 29 on the Hot 100 in 1980. They had two more mid-level chart hits in 1981 with “Love Is Like a Rock” and “My Girl.”
His modest success during that era on the Billboard charts was hardly indicative of just how beloved he was in his native Pennsylvania and the Midwest region, widely seen as being to Pittsburgh what Michael Stanley was to Cleveland.
“For my money, he was the most beloved Pittsburgh musician of all time,” Joe Grushecky told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Grushecky, as the leader of the Iron City Houserockers, would have been one of the few other viable candidates for that title. But, as he told the newspaper, “I don’t know anyone who was loved more than Donnie. He just had that warmth about him, and it came through in his performance.”
Iris was a trouper to the end, performing his final show less than a month ago, on Sept. 28, at Citizens Live at the Wylie, seated in a chair shortly after having radiation treatment in the afternoon.
“He sang like a bird that night,” his longtime keyboard player and best friend, Mark Avsec, told the Post-Gazette. “It was the first time on a chair, and he didn’t like that. But the poor guy, the cancer was spreading, and he was in pain, and he really wanted to do that show and be with the people.”
Iris began singing in a doo-wop group in high school in the early ’60s, then moved on to rock ‘n’ roll and R&B cover bands before the Jaggerz were formed in 1964. They were eventually signed to Gamble Records, the brainchild of Philly soul greats Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, and released their first album, “Introducing the Jaggerz,” in 1969.
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