His daughter Wendy Adamczyk said the cause was lung and throat cancer.
Like many other teenagers in the early days of rock ’n’ roll, and his friends Danny Rapp, Frank Maffei and Joe Terranova (also known as Joe Terry), who called themselves the Juvenaires, harmonized in cars and school bathrooms. Their singing on a street corner in Philadelphia in 1957 attracted the attention of John Madara, then a 19-year-old singer, who heard them through his nearby bedroom window.
“The next day I asked some friends, ‘I heard this great group. Do you know who they are?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, that was Danny Rapp and the guys,’” Madara recalled in an interview in 2014 with Tom Meros for his online series “Tom TV.” Aware of Madara’s interest in the group, White found his way to Madara’s apartment, where they struck up a friendship and agreed to work together.
Madara suggested they write a song that would play off teenagers dancing the bop on the television show “American Bandstand” and have an infectious beat like Jerry Lee Lewis’ recent rockabilly hit “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.” With help from Artie Singer, a vocal coach and producer, they made a demo record, “Do the Bop,” with Madara singing lead and the Juvenaires singing backup. But when Singer and Madara brought the demo to Prep Records, it was rejected.
“Artie took it to Dick Clark” — then a powerful Philadelphia disc jockey as well as the host of “American Bandstand” — “who suggested the title change to ‘At the Hop,’” White said in an interview in 2013 with the blog Milwaukee Opportunities. The group quickly recorded a new version — only the lyrics needed to be changed — with Rapp singing lead.
Clark agreed to play the song and gave it a huge boost in late 1957 when he had the group, now renamed Danny and the Juniors, on “Bandstand.” It leapt to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed there for seven weeks.
Hoping to repeat the success of “At the Hop,” White wrote “Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay” in early 1958 while touring with the group in Davenport, Iowa. It was not the hit “At the Hop” was — it peaked at No. 19 — but it acted as an enthusiastic rebuke to adults’ view of rock as a short-lived fad that tore at teenagers’ moral fiber.
“Rock and roll is here to stay,” they sang. “It will never die/It was meant to be that way/Though I don’t know why.”
David Ernest White was born on Nov. 26, 1939, in Philadelphia. When he was 3 he joined his parents, Frank and Marcia Tricker, in their acrobatic touring act, Barry and Brenda and Company. David showed an early interest in music; he began playing piano, clarinet and trombone in elementary school and was writing songs at 14.
The Juvenaires, which White formed when he was about 15, sang at local parties and other events. Sometimes they practiced in White’s 1953 Pontiac so they would not disturb the neighbors.
Danny and the Juniors had a few modest hits after “At the Hop” and “Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay,” but none that kept them atop the charts. White left the group around 1961 and, in partnership with Madara, wrote many songs, including the Top 10 hits “The Fly” (1961), for Chubby Checker; “You Don’t Own Me” (1963), for Lesley Gore; and “1-2-3” (1965), for Len Barry.
In 1965, White, Madara and Ray Gilmore formed a short-lived group, the Spokesmen, and together wrote a single, “The Dawn of Correction,” an optimistic corrective to Barry McGuire’s foreboding No. 1 hit, “Eve of Destruction.” It rose to No. 36 on the Hot 100.
White found less success afterward. He broke up with Madara, released a solo album under the name David White Tricker that did not do well; lived for a time in a trailer park; worked on various musical and film projects, and wrote a memoir that has not yet been published. He also collected royalties from filmmakers and advertisers eager to license songs from his archive, especially “At the Hop” and “Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay.”
In the late 1960s, Rapp formed an all-new version of Danny and the Juniors that toured the country; at one point, he asked White to join him. While they never reunited, White sang a few songs with Rapp’s group at a lounge near Lake Tahoe in 1982.
“He was real up, he was real excited about seeing me,” White told The Los Angeles Times in 1988. “I came very close to going back with him because he was working like crazy.”
It was the last time they saw each other. Rapp died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1983.
Terry and Maffei continued to perform occasionally as Danny and the Juniors, along with Maffei’s brother, Bob.
In addition to Adamczyk, White is survived by his wife, Sandra (Simone) White; another daughter, Jody Conrad, and three grandchildren. A third daughter, Linda White, died in 2013.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.