PHILADELPHIA — Rocco Notte, 72, the Philadelphia musician and songwriter with the New Wave-era rock band, the A’s, who remained a key player in the local music scene for decades, has died.

Notte died on July 26 in hospice at Methodist Hospital in South Philadelphia. The cause of death was pancreatic cancer, his son Ian Notte said.

With the A’s, a Philly quartet that released two albums on Arista Records, Notte played keyboards and co-wrote songs like “After Last Night” and “A Woman’s Got The Power” with the band’s charismatic frontman Richard Bush.

During the A’s late 1970s-early 1980s heyday, both songs were in heavy rotation on WYSP-FM (94.1) and WMMR-FM (93.30), where deejay Jackie Bam Bam paid tribute to Notte this month.

“A Woman’s Got The Power” was covered by both Jennifer Holiday, who had a #1 R&B hit with it in 2000, and Bruce Springsteen & the E Street band saxophonist Clarence Clemons with singer J.T. Bowen. Springsteen plays a car wash workers in Clemons’ video , and twice performed the song in-concert.

Notte grew up in the Frankford section of Northeast Philadelphia and displayed musical talent from an early age, first playing trumpet, then drums and guitar, as well as piano.

“Oh my goodness, if you put him in a room with an instrument, he could play it,” said Ian Notte, who played guitar with his father in post-A’s bands, the Candles (which also included Bush), the Nellies, and Jamie O’Donnell & the Pheasant Pluckers.

The A’s guitarist Rick DiFonzo — who Bush called the band’s “Keith Richards figure” — grew up a block away from Notte on Fillmore Street. They formed their first band, the Cliques, in 1965.

“I was 11 and Rocco was 13,” DiFonzo remembers. “Rocco played drums and I played guitar, and we also had a banjo and saxophone. We played a wedding and a battle of the bands, which we somehow won.”

DiFonzo and Notte wrote songs in their 1960s psychedelic band Queen Anne’s Lace, and then met Bucks County native Bush. Together, they played with various bands in South Jersey and Pennsylvania bars through the mid-1970s.

“Then in ’77, we got serious,” DiFonzo said.

“Rocco and I started writing together,” said Bush. “We were like a glam-rock cover band, and we discovered the [Sex] Pistols, and it became the A’s.” Bush chose the name to be first in the alphabet, “though I was worried about the Aardvarks,” he said.

“Rocco was a really skilled musician,” Bush said. “He and Rick both were excellent at their instruments. We [Bush and fellow A’s Terry Bortman and Michael Snyder] had to convince them to not play so fancy.”

“And then we embraced the whole punk thing, because we were a bunch of misfits. That band felt like a gang. It was us against the world.”

“Rocco was just amazing,” said DiFonzo. “His chord progressions and musical sensibilities made that band, made the sound distinctive.”

One punk summer playing Jersey bars “we got fired from every gig we had,” Bush remembers proudly. “We were playing Clash and Dead Boys and Pistols covers and wearing torn shirts. The crowd were like: ‘What is going on?’”

Notte had a biting wit and anti-authoritarian streak. “He was a rebel,” said Bush. DiFonzo recalls a show at Dick Lee’s, a club on Route 130 in Bellmawr, New Jersey.

“It was a half-disco crowd, and half our punky crowd. They wouldn’t give us free beer, so we brought our own. Rocco was walking around with a beer, and the bouncer told him to drop it. He did, and it shattered in the middle of the dance floor. The bartender took a swing at him. All hell broke loose with punk people fighting disco people. And that was the great riot of Dick Lee’s.”

The A’s signed to legendary executive Clive Davis’ Arista label after producer Rick Chertoff saw them at the Main Point in Bryn Mawr.

Chertoff, who would later have success with Philly’s the Hooters, as well as Cyndi Lauper and Joan Osborne, produced the band’s self-titled debut in 1979 and "A Woman’s Got the Power," two years later.

The band was a Philly favorite, but never got the support to tour nationally or make videos at the dawn of the MTV age. In retrospect, “After Last Night” is a ripping power-pop masterwork and the song “A Woman’s Got the Power,” sounds like an undeniable Motown-inspired hit.

Arista dropped the band almost immediately after the band’s second album was released.

After a self-released EP, "Four Dances," in 1982, the A’s broke up the next year.

Notte occasionally worked odd jobs, Ian Notte said, but essentially earned his living as a musician. He played in two iterations of the Candles with Mr., Bush, and the A’s played reunion shows in 2007 and 2013.

His interests were broad. Passionate about Bach, Handel, and DeBussy, Ian Notte said, he was also “wild for astrophysics, and all things space.”

Philly musician Rich Kaufmann knew the A’s, but was skeptical when late producer George Manney brought Notte in to play harmonica on a 1999 album by Kaufmann’s country-rock band the Rolling Hayseeds.

But Notte was perfect for not only harmonica and keyboards, but also the Mariachi trumpet parts. Soon, he joined the band.

Notte “could rock a Johnny Johnson piano part, slide into a contemplative Bill Evans jazz meditation, throw in some Steve Nieve-styled high octave piano stabs and groove you with Augie Meyers farfisa magic,” Kaufmann wrote on Facebook. “Rocco could do it all.”

In recent years, Notte played in the Rolling Stones tribute band, the Glimmer Twins. “He was a little frustrated with that because he couldn’t improvise,” Bush said. “He had to play the same thing every night. But it was good money.”

He more freely expressed himself playing jazz at Philly venues like World Cafe Live and private parties. In his 20s, Notte studied with renowned Philadelphia jazz pianist and educator Jimmy Amadie, “and jazz really became his love, later on,” DiFonzo said.

“Rocco was the heart and soul of the Schuylkill Rhythm Section,” said Steve Ozer, the drummer in that band Notte played regularly with for 20 years, most recently in April. “He was a superb jazz pianist, deft, lyrical, inventive.”

Ozer said Notte was a humble man who “would never talk about his accomplishments. He was a one-of-a-kind musician and songwriter and a memorable personality. A true professional and a great friend.”

Notte is survived by his sisters Lynette and Laurie, sons Brooker, Ian, Rocco III, and Robin, longtime companion Llynnie Hoffman, 10 grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

His life will be celebrated with family and friends on Sept. 7. For more information email ian.october.notte@gmail.com.