Arlene Smith, lead singer of pioneering '50s girl group the Chantels, dies at 84

NEW YORK (AP) — Arlene Smith, one of the first “girl group” stars who as a teenager and a founder of the Chantels co-wrote and sang lead on the 1950s doo-wop classic “Maybe,” has died at 84.

Smith's manager and close friend, Paul Errante, told The Associated Press that she died of a heart attack Wednesday at a New York City hospital.

Male harmony groups from the Drifters to Dion and the Belmonts were common in the early years of rock ’n’ roll. But female acts — especially Black female acts — were rare until the late 1950s, when performers such as the Chantels and the Bobbettes broke through and helped make possible a wave of girl groups in the next decade, including the Shirelles, the Ronettes and the Crystals.

“My thing was, ‘The guys are not the only ones that can do this,’” Smith told the authors of the 2023 oral history “But Will You Love Me Tomorrow?”

“Maybe,” recorded in a makeshift studio in a Manhattan church, was a spare, pleading ballad that Smith sang with weary force, in part because the group had to run through it more than 50 times. The 1958 release was a Top 20 hit that eventually sold more than 1 million copies and was covered by Janis Joplin and the Three Degrees, among others. Smith and the Chantels were voted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2002, a year before Rolling Stone ranked “Maybe” at No. 199 on the magazine’s list of the 500 best songs.

“The Chantels forced listeners to reconsider doo-wop as something more than a man’s domain, and the reality of a girl group holding forth on guys’ turf laid out cultural possibilities in an entirely new way,” NPR music critic Tim Riley wrote in his book “Fever,” published in 2004. “With ‘Maybe,’ Arlene Smith infused her vocal with so much determined naiveté that she transformed all the anxiety of a doomed relationship into a fervent wish for its revival.”

The Chantels had a handful of other hits, including “Every Night (I Pray)" and “Look In My Eyes,” but never matched the success of “Maybe.” Smith left the group in 1959, around the time their record label went bankrupt, and she worked briefly with producer Phil Spector, recording the single “Love, Love, Love.” But her career soon faded and, by the 1970s, estranged from the other original Chantels, she was touring with a new lineup of backing singers.

Smith eventually received a master’s degree in education and taught music to elementary school students in New York City before retiring in the 2000s. She never married or had children, Errante said.

The Chantels were pioneers sometimes trapped in the conventions of the era. Smith's name was initially left out of the credits to “Maybe,” a theft of copyright common in the music industry in the '50s. The cover of their first album, “We Are the Chantels,” originally featured a group photograph, but was changed to show an image of two young white people leaning over a jukebox.

“Things were going on in the country,” Smith told The New York Times in 1995. “There was a lot to transcend.”

In “But Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” Smith said she never wanted to sing “girl songs” and instead was drawn to male groups whose “harmonies were so rich and full.” She was in high school when “Maybe” came out, but had been performing for years, influenced by Etta James, among others. As a girl, Smith attended the St. Anthony of Padua School in New York's Bronx borough and began singing with fellow choir members Sonia Goring, Renée Minus, Jackie Landry and Lois Harris in the early 1950s, when all were in their early teens or younger. They named themselves after a nearby school and basketball rival, St. Frances de Chantal, and honed an intricate singing style in part by mastering Gregorian chants.

“We navigated toward each other. We used to sit in choir practice and make up parts,” Smith told the publication Catholic New York in 2019, around the time they were honored with a Bronx street sign that read, “The Chantels — Hit Record ‘Maybe’ 1958.”

The Chantels sang at various local talent shows and broke through professionally in 1957, when Richard Barrett, producer and leader of the male harmony group the Valentines, recommended them to End Records owner George Goldner. Their debut single, “He’s Gone,” came out that summer. “Maybe” — widely believed to have been written by Barrett and Smith — was released months later and helped lead to the group's touring with everyone from Chuck Berry to Ike and Tina Turner.

“It was fun,” Smith later told ClassicBands.com. “You just take your books, get ’em packed. You don’t have a thing to do all day. You sit next to your buddy on the bus, read, crochet, do your homework, look out at scenery, sleep, eat. C’mon, it was wonderful! I didn’t have a thought or care in the world. It was really a nice time in my life, because I was doing exactly what I wanted to do.”