Rock ’n’ Roll Is Here To Stay. So, In Their Own Way, Were Danny and the Juniors.
The last surviving original member of Danny and the Juniors, Frank Maffei, died on Saturday, closing one of the more bittersweet chapters from rock ’n’ roll’s formative years.
And there were a lot of bittersweet chapters in rock ’n’ roll’s formative years.
Maffei was 14 in 1955 when he got together with Danny Rapp, Joe Terry (Terranova) and Dave White, his pals at John Bartram High School in Philadelphia, to form a singing group they rather cleverly called the Juvenairs.
They were four white kids who (like Brian Wilson) knew the harmonies of the Four Freshmen, but also loved black harmony groups like the Teenagers and the Ravens.
A couple of years before a whole wave of white harmony groups like the Elegants, the Mystics and Dion and the Belmonts, the Juvenairs were infusing classic pop harmonies with the emerging beat of rock ’n’ roll.
They were particularly adept at ballads, as they would demonstrate over the next few years with recordings like “Sometimes,” “A Schoolboy Romance” and the little-known and clumsily titled but lovely “A Thief.”
That’s not what they’re known for, however, because what caught on were two uptempo tunes that illustrated how, by 1958, rock ’n’ roll had supplanted Perry Como, Eddie Fisher and company as the popular music of the day.
Their first score, and biggest, was “At The Hop,” which was ambling along as a modest local Philadelphia hit until, on Dec. 2, 1957, Dick Clark had a group fail to show up for their scheduled appearance on his Philadelphia-based Bandstand. (Rumor has often had it that the no-shows were Little Anthony and the Imperials.)
Clark called one Artie Singer, a pal and, oh yeah, owner of the label that had released “At The Hop.” Singer said he could send over Danny and the Juniors to lip-synch “At The Hop.” Did we mention that Singer wrote it?
Anyhow, Bandstand was a major viral platform of its day, and a month after Danny and the Juniors debuted there, “At The Hop” was the №1 record in America. It would remain the №1 record in America for seven weeks.
In the custom of the day, this made Danny and the Juniors pretty much no money, but it did get them live gigs, package tours and a head start on their next single, which would be “Rock and Roll Is Here To Stay.”
While “Rock and Roll Is Here To Stay” barely made the top 20, many early rock ’n’ roll fans consider it the more treasured and enduring record. Remember that in 1958 millions of appalled American adults still viewed rock ’n’ roll as an inexplicable fad that teenagers used as a tool to annoy their parents. So “Rock and Roll Is Here To Stay” became a kind of holler-back anthem, alongside tunes like Chuck Berry’s “Rock and Roll Music” or the Showmen’s “It Will Stand.”
As far as hits go, that was it for Danny and the Juniors, which may be part of the reason that they are rarely cited in discussions of early rock ’n’ roll. It also didn’t help that their style was clean-cut — they wore white bucks, like Pat Boone — and unlike Elvis or Little Richard, provided no pole on which to hang any kind of rebel flag.
And then there’s the fact that their two hits have been such oldies radio staples over the years that after a while they became a little like wallpaper.
White left the group around 1960 to become a writer/producer, and he scored a couple of hits with “You Don’t Own Me” for Lesley Gore and “One Two Three” for Len Barry.
Rapp, Terry and Maffei stayed together for a while even as the hits dried up and the gigs tailed off. Then in the early 1970s, oldies became a thing and both “At The Hop” and the group came back into demand. “At The Hop” was featured in American Graffiti, albeit sung by Flash Cadillac and the Continental Kids. Danny and the Juniors themselves appeared in another ’50s music film, Let The Good Times Roll. They also rolled out onto the road — in two separate groups, one with Rapp and the other with Maffei and Terry, both calling themselves Danny and the Juniors. Welcome to the oldies biz.
Except for A-list stars, which Danny and the Juniors were not, the music road has long been a double-edged sword for artists.
On the one hand, it’s almost free money to buy a stage outfit and sing a couple of vintage songs a crowd is going to love. It’s rarely a full living, but it’s a cool side gig — as it was for Frank Maffei, who went to school and got a day job as an optometrist. He was a Junior nights and weekends, and parlayed it into a family business when he recruited his brother Bobby as a replacement Junior.
The road can also be an unending cycle of long drives, strange towns and motel rooms, not to mention the obligation to sing the same two songs every night even if you’re really tired of them.
Danny Rapp at one time quit the music game to become the assistant manager of a toy store. One imagines that being asked about the availability of Beanie Babies felt a little tame after scoring a national №1 hit record, so when the first oldies wave came in, he rode it.
A decade later, he was tired of the ride. He remained a solid stage performer, but he blamed the road for the dissolution of his marriage and like too many artists before and after, he killed a lot of time drinking too much.
That’s what he was doing at the Jigsaw Bar in Quartzsite, Arizona, on the night of April 2, 1983. He also bought a gun. On the morning of April 4, the maid at the Yacht Club Motel found his body.
Terry and Maffei kept performing as Danny and the Juniors for another 36 years, until Terry died in 2019. David White, who battled to make a living in the music world, died the same year.
“At The Hop” today is generally regarded as an infectious early dance record. Danny and the Juniors are regarded as two-hit wonders, without the flair of the artists who get the reverence.
Still, Joe Terry and Frank Maffei were making audiences smile, dance and applaud long after both they and those audiences had become seniors. Rock ’n’ roll is here to stay, indeed.
