LOS ANGELES, July 2 -- He co-wrote the song in 1978, when it meant something specific: a tribute to a community center on Christopher Street, a love letter to a particular neighborhood, a signal to an audience that knew precisely what it was hearing. He spent the next four decades watching it become something else entirely. A wedding reception standard. A stadium call-and-response. A presidential entrance theme. Both versions of the song belonged to Victor Willis. One he wrote. The other happened to him.

Willis, the founding lead singer and primary songwriter of the Village People, died June 30 from what his wife, Karen-Huff Willis, described as a "short, but aggressive illness." He was 74. Karen-Huff Willis and the band announced the de...