Maybe

Before becoming sensations with Philadelphia International and their smash hit “When Will I See You Again,” Philly-based soul trio The Three Degrees weathered years of personnel changes and non-charting singles before Roulette Records took a chance on releasing their first full-length LP. If you know one song on this, it’s probably the effervescent title cut — a revamp (emphasis on vamp) of the 1957 Chantels single, featuring a star-turn performance from Valerie Holiday as the woman lamenting her broken-off relationship in sassy-yet-pained monologue (“You know, girls, it’s hard to find a guy that really blows your mind…”) before Sheila Ferguson and Fayette Pinkney’s harmonies usher her fiery to-the-rafters lead into the stratosphere. But aside from it being the only way to hear that performance in its full 5-and-a-half-minute splendor, there were far more reasons to pick up the full-length at a time when mainstream R&B was still leaning on singles. As a harmony group where everyone sounded great as a lead, Pinkney’s delicate power gives a gravitas to “MacArthur Park” that only Donna Summer would top, and Sheila Ferguson’s spotlight on “Stardust” gives the arrangement’s 1957-via-1970 throwback atmosphere a melismatic showstopper turn that anticipated her bigger role in the group’s Gamble-and-Huff hits. But just like the Three Degrees’ voices, Maybe works best as a whole, an ambitiously everything-to-everyone sort of nightclub-soul record — where else can you hear those aforementioned warhorse covers mixed in with takes on the James Gang (the gloriously refracting symphonic-psychedelia of “Collage”) and Sly Stone (the big sisters to Little Sister, doing his righteously accusatory funk proud on “You’re The One”)? — that pulls it off through sheer force of their vocal talent and charisma. The sound that backed them and the songs they sang would cohere into something more identifiably theirs when they joined PIR, but the version of the Three Degrees here sound like they could thrive no matter what direction they took.