Arlene Smith, The Chantels Co-Founder Who Wrote and Sang Hit Song ‘Maybe,’ Dies at 84: Report

Smith went on to be a teacher, and continued to perform with The Chantels

NEED TO KNOW

• Arlene Smith co-founded the Chantels, one of the first successful girl groups, and wrote and sang their hit song “Maybe”
• The Chantels’ 1957 song “Maybe” sold over a million copies and was ranked on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time
• Smith later pursued a solo career, attended Juilliard, and reformed the Chantels in 1973 with new members

Singer Arlene Smith, who co-founded the influential girl group The Chantels and wrote and sang “Maybe,” their biggest hit, has died. She was 84.

Friend Matt Beckoff told The Hollywood Reporter that Smith died in New York City of natural causes on Wednesday, July 29.

Smith’s musical journey began in choir practice at St. Anthony of Padua school in the Bronx, where she met future groupmates Sonia Goring Wilson, Renee Minus White, Jackie Landry Jackson and Lois Harris.

The group signed their first record deal in 1957, and released their debut single “He’s Gone” later that year, a tune written by Smith while practicing piano.

In December 1957, the Chantels released “Maybe,” which became their signature hit. With Smith on lead vocals and recorded at a church in midtown Manhattan, the song reached No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, sold over a million copies and was even ranked at 199 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004.

“We were the first ones [to find success as a girl group],” Smith told ClassicBands.com. “They didn’t know what to do with us. The lesson to be learned from that is, to have a successful product out, you have to be unique. And the uniqueness of our group was that we were young women who had a pop sound and a strong lead singer and she sang ballads and I sang high, with pretty harmonies around me. So, that’s what they went with.”

After the group was dropped by their label in 1959, Smith pursued a solo career and eventually went to Juilliard School of Music, and the group went on without her and without Harris, who went to college.

By 1973, Smith reformed the Chantels, adding Barbara Murray and Pauline Moore. The group was inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2002.

The Chantels’ page in the Vocal Group Hall of Fame credits Smith with being the special sauce that set them apart.

“The girls had a strength apart from their angelic vocal presence; the writing ability of lead singer Arlene Smith,” the Hall said. “There weren’t many girl groups around in the mid-’50s and even fewer that contributed to the recording process with their own lyrics and melodies.”

Smith went on to become a teacher in the Bronx, but continued to perform. She and the Chantels were featured in the 1999 PBS special Doo Wop 50, and she dedicated “Maybe” to Landry Jackson, who died in 1997.

Host Jerry Butler described the Chantels as “true originals” and as “the first all rhythm and blues female group to sustain a stream of hits.”

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