Dennis Greene, Sha Na Na singer who became law professor, dies at 66

Dennis Greene, a founding member of the doo-wop group Sha Na Na who later became a movie studio executive and then a law professor, has died at the age of 66.

Greene died Saturday in Columbus, Ohio, after a brief illness, according to his nephew, Edward Robinson.

Sha Na Na, whose brand of retro ‘50s music seemed to resonate with listeners, drew a huge following after performing at Woodstock in 1969 and in the 1978 movie “Grease.”

But Greene, who was born in New York City, had long been more interested in a career in law than performing nostalgic tunes from his youth.

“Being a rock star was never something that was particularly interesting to me,” Greene said in a interview in 1998, when he was a law school professor at the University of Oregon

Robinson said his uncle left Sha Na Na in 1984 to study law. He earned a master’s degree at Harvard and a law degree at Yale before going to work as a vice president at Columbia Pictures, where he worked on Spike Lee’s 1990 film “School Daze.”

He taught law at various universities, most recently at the University of Dayton.