![]() Wild Cherry is where Iris befriended keyboardist Mark Avsec, who would become the co-lyricist and willing behind-the-scenes band leader for The Cruisers. " Ferris recounts a Wild Cherry gig from that era where rifle-toting guards in rural Tennessee made sure the band didn't back out of a show threatened by rain. And then the strumming guitar was probably a Creedence Clearwater kind of thing."įerris does local music fans a service by outlining the Jaggerz' largely un-documented post-"Rapper" years, including how the band, led by lead singer Jimmie Ross, ended up backing Wolfman Jack on the famed deejay's solo album, and how decades later numerous hip-hop artists sampled the band's "Memoirs of The Traveler" (and ironically, not "The Rapper").įollowing the Jaggerz's demise, Iris briefly joined Wild Cherry as that Steubenville band was headed toward an unglamorous ending, unable to duplicate the success of their smash "Play That Funky Music. That’s probably where I got some of the inspiration for some of the stuff on that tune. And I liked the simple kind of riffs that (Keith) Richards did. ![]() Everybody was receptive to everything, and we worked hard at all the things that everybody brought in. The idea hit me in my sleep, and I woke up and started writing. It was such an obvious thing to write about. "I was just watching guys do their thing at the clubs, going up and rappin’ to chicks to get ’em up to their apartments. Readers get an extensive account of how Iris co-founded The Jaggerz, the band whose vocal harmonies swooped them from Beaver Falls to the top of the charts in early 1970 and a spot on Dick Clark's "American Bandstand." Iris penned the group's lone hit "The Rapper," and explains the origins of that novelty tune. "Donnie has a hungry heart, but he wasn’t born to run Donnie dutifully stays where he is," Ferris writes, playing off a couple lyrics from Bruce Springsteen. The book includes Iris' young man recollections of hanging out at the Wolverine car hop and drag racing his '64 Pontiac Grand Prix on River Road, between Ellwood City and Beaver Falls, then later serving in the Army National Guard, included a time, armed with a bayonet rifle (but no bullets), where he was dispatched to guard a Pittsburgh liquor store during a 1968 racial riot. Personal tales in "The Story of Donnie Iris and the Cruisers" really surprise and resonate, filling in the gaps for even those of us who have befriended and followed Iris' career for decades. He begins his book urging readers first to blast the Iris rocker "That's The Way Love Oughta Be" for a reminder of how he The Cruisers were an excellent - and still enduring - classic-rock band. Though Ferris also was surprised to discover some Iris songs, faithfully played by Pittsburgh's WDVE-FM, never were released as national singles (though should have been). Indeed, Iris and the Cruisers reached the Billboard charts an impressive seven times, with three of those songs - "Ah! Leah!" "Love is Like a Rock" and "My Girl" - climbing to the hallowed Top-40.
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