The Pittsburgh Penguins shared a heartfelt post on social media on Monday to remember a legend of the Steel City.<\/p>\n
Donnie Iris has died. He was 83.<\/p>\n
This is what the Penguins shared on their X account:<\/p>\n
If the visual doesn’t show up properly \u2014 it’s of Iris singing the national anthem in a Penguins sweater at a Penguins game.<\/p>\n
Donnie Iris Bio<\/p>\n
Donnnie Iris was originally from Ellwood City, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
He’s best known for the song “Ah! Leah!”<\/p>\n
Iris had been diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2023, but he kept performing until very recently.<\/p>\n
Iris announced his retirement less than a month ago, on Sept. 28.<\/p>\n
“After much thought, and in light of recent health issues, I have made the difficult decision to retire from future concert performances,” Iris wrote<\/a> on social media after his final show. “Music has given me far more than I could ever put into words. From the earliest days to every chapter of my life, your support has been a constant source of joy and inspiration.”<\/p>\n Iris was a part of multiple bands in his career.<\/p>\n He wrote and sang the No. 1 song “The Rapper” in 1970.<\/p>\n He then joined Wild Cherry, where he met Mark Avsec to form Donnie Iris & The Cruisers. Their album “Back On The Streets” included that famous song “Ah! Leah!”<\/p>\n CBS News<\/a> shared this additional information:<\/p>\n Iris was christened the “new king of cool” by a reviewer after a show in 1980, and from that name, the follow-up album “King Cool” was born. The album had songs “Love Is Like A Rock,” “That’s The Way Love Ought To Be” and “My Girl.”<\/p>\n During their time as a band, Donnie Iris & The Cruisers toured with names like Journey, Loverboy, Foreigner, Bon Jovi, Joan Jett and Hall & Oates.<\/p>\n Donnie Iris With Penguins<\/p>\n The picture shared by the Penguins was from when Iris performed the national anthem in Pittsburgh in a custom No. 80 jersey.<\/p>\n The jersey was given to Iris to celebrate his 80th birthday.<\/p>\n Here’s a video of that performance:<\/p>\n Many fans reached out on social media to pay their respects.<\/p>\n Iris will bring that spirit and that song to the next life.<\/p>\n This article was originally published on HEAVY<\/a><\/p>\n The post Penguins Remember Pittsburgh Legend After Death at 83<\/a> appeared first on HEAVY<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pittsburgh Penguins shared a heartfelt post on social media on Monday to remember a legend of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315064,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74],"class_list":["post-315063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}