The Chantels

The Best of the Chantels (1990) A–

1. Maybe
2. He's Gone
3. Every Night (I Pray)
4. I Love You So

In the Bronx in the Fifties, the St. Anthony's School choir sang Gregorian chant. One afternoon in early 1957, in front of the ticket office of the Broadway Theatre, five of the girls sang a hymn for producer Richard Barrett. Soon he doctored a couple of songs by their lead soprano, 15-year-old Arlene Smith; by the end of the summer, they had hit the pop charts. Five of their singles were hits over the next year, but the streak ended quickly, and Smith quit the group. The Chantels had four more hits with varying lineups; Smith continued a solo career on and off while getting a Masters and becoming a Bronx schoolteacher.

Often cited as the first major girl group, the Chantels don't sound like they created that tradition: Smith dominates the sound, so that the music's more reminiscent of soul with backing vocals. Smith is perhaps a tad too classicist to stand with the all timers, but she emotes determinedly and sometimes quizzically, without losing the freshness of the doo-woppers she surpassed in technique. The song are hackwork, yet they fit together, always offering something for a precociously talented teen to play with. It wasn't long before soul women surpassed this music in sophistication, but Smith's uncalculated expression of girlish hopes in a genre coming of age had no parallel -- until the brief blooming of women rappers of the early Eighties, which once again began in the Bronx.

"He's Gone" foregrounds Smith's heartache before closing on two chords harmonising the word "gone": the first elegantly broken, the second transcendently blocked. Smith is smoother on "Maybe", their biggest hit, espressing a desire for reunion, and miraculously doing it without self-pity: she's hurt, yet there might be a chance to get him back, maybe? "Every Night" sees Smith assuming responsibility for her lover's departure, while "I Love You So" is their best non-fatalistic song, letting Smith get a little cosier.

Listen to \"He's Gone\" at Soul Patrol