"Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye)" co-writer Paul Leka is dead at 68

Excerpts from Terence McArdle's October 25, 2011 Washington Post obituary follow.

Paul Leka died of lung cancer October 12 at a hospice in Sharon, Connecticut.

As a producer, Mr. Leka's credits covered a wide range — the soft rock of such 1960s groups as the Left Banke and the Peppermint Rainbow, the easy listening orchestras of Peter Nero and Paul Mauriat, and singer-songwriter Harry Chapin.

Mr. Leka is best remembered for his accidental success with "Na Na Hey Hey," a No. 1 record on the Billboard charts in 1969. It was resurrected in 1977 when Nancy Faust, the organist for the Chicago White Sox, started playing the refrain whenever the opposing batter struck out or the opposing team’s pitcher was removed from the mound.

The singalong — "na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, goodbye" — has since been taken up by countless people at baseball, football and soccer games. However, as initially written, the song was intended to fill up the B-side of a record for singer-songwriter Gary De Carlo.

With co-writers De Carlo and Dale Frashuer, Mr. Leka dug out a song that he had abandoned some years earlier. He put a new chorus at the beginning and end, bringing the song to four minutes in length — too long for airplay on Top 40 radio.

"I started writing while I was sitting at the piano, going 'na na na na, na na na na...'" Mr. Leka said in Fred Bronson’s book "The Billboard Book of Number One Hits." "Everything was 'na-na' when you didn't have a lyric.... We agreed the song was just a B-side and said... let's leave those lyrics in."

They recorded and mixed the song cheaply in one evening — so cheaply that Mr. Leka played keyboards over the drum track from another song.

But Mercury executives loved the record. They released it under a fictitious band name, Steam, because singer De Carlo did not want it to compete with the other songs recorded under his stage name, Garrett Scott. Mr. Leka came up with the band name as he watched steam rise from a manhole while leaving the studio.

You couldn't make it up if you tried.

Such are the serendipities that result in magic.

Paul Vitello's October 23, 2011 New York Times Leka obituary is here.

Below,

Paul Leka back in the day.