I was today days old when I learned that Donnie Iris — the voice behind “Ah! Leah!,” the song every Western Pennsylvania bar still plays like it’s the unofficial state anthem — died on October 26, 2026, at age 83, following a bladder cancer diagnosis that began back in 2023. And buried inside his obituary is a detail I didn’t know at all: “Ah! Leah!” wasn’t even his first brush with a national hit. He’d already had a #2 song on the Billboard Hot 100 years earlier, fronting a completely different band.
A Quick Bio: From The Jaggerz to Wild Cherry to the Cruisers
Born Dominic Ierace on February 28, 1943, in New Castle, Pennsylvania (he grew up in nearby Ellwood City), Iris spent 1964 to 1976 fronting The Jaggerz. Their 1970 single “The Rapper” hit #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and went gold — a genuine national hit, more than a decade before most people had ever heard the name Donnie Iris. He left the band in 1976.
Here’s “The Rapper” itself:
From 1978 to 1979, he joined Wild Cherry — yes, the “Play That Funky Music” band — as guitarist and vocalist. The timing mattered: he signed on after Wild Cherry’s massive 1976 hit, appearing on their 1979 album Only the Wild Survive, which didn’t produce a charting single. He had zero hits during his stint with Wild Cherry, and the band dissolved shortly after without ever repeating that one big moment.
In 1979, Iris formed Donnie Iris & The Cruisers with keyboardist and co-writer Mark Avsec, alongside Marty Lee Hoenes, Albritton McClain, and Kevin Valentine. This is the lineup that made him a star in his own right, and it's where this whole story turns back to "Ah! Leah!"
“Ah! Leah!” — the Song and the Video
“Ah! Leah!” came out in 1981 off the album Back on the Streets and hit #29 on the Billboard Hot 100 — a modest chart number for a song that became something much bigger locally: Donnie Iris’s signature tune and an unofficial anthem of Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania, still a staple at Steelers and Penguins games decades later. Here’s the official music video:
The Cruisers followed it with two more hits: “Love Is Like a Rock” (#37 Hot 100) and “My Girl” (#25 Hot 100) — his biggest chart hit of the Cruisers era. The band toured alongside Journey, Bon Jovi, and Hall & Oates.
The Final Shows
Iris announced his retirement from touring on October 9, 2026. His final concert had already happened by then — a show on September 28, 2026, at Citizens Live at The Wylie in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh’s mayor publicly called him “part of the soundtrack of our city,” which, for a guy who spent his career one state removed from the spotlight twice before finally getting his own, feels about right.
He died less than a month later, on October 26, 2026, at 83. Two different #2-and-adjacent hits, two different bands most people don’t connect to him, and one song that outgrew the charts entirely to become a city’s own anthem — that’s the whole arc.