Fayette Pinkney, of the 3 Degrees

There were eight girls in and out of the Three Degrees in the trio's first nine months.

"It's hard to grab a girl when she's, say 18, 17 years old and dying to go out with the fellas and go to the parties," Fayette Pinkney said in a 1971 Evening Bulletin interview, "and strap her down to rehearsals and confine her to record hops on weekends, instead of parties.

"And instead of coming home, instead of getting out of school and going to the corner shop for malts, you gotta come home because you got rehearsal."

Fayette Pinkney knew how to make those sacrifices at 17, enough that from 1965 to 1976, she knew national fame as one of the original Three Degrees.

On Saturday, Miss Pinkney, 61, of Lansdale, died of acute respiratory failure at Lansdale Hospital.

In a statement, Philadelphia International Records founders Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff said Miss Pinkney and the Three Degrees "were our Philly sound version of Motown's Supremes - but bigger and stronger and melodic."

"She had a very strong and soulful voice," they said. "She was part of the original vocals for the hit song we recorded with her and the Three Degrees called 'When Will I See You Again.' . . . She will truly be missed by all of us as a member of one the world's greatest soulful female groups."

By the time of Miss Pinkney's 1971 interview, the group had played resort nightclubs in Las Vegas, Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and Australia.

The previous October, theirs was the opening act at the Copacabana in Manhattan. Their manager showed a promotion piece, shot in Australia, to the director of a film being shot at the club.

And that's how the group got to be in The French Connection.

Yesterday, before she had to leave for a Japan tour with the current Three Degrees, Helen Scott recalled that she met Miss Pinkney when she was a Class of 1965 senior at Overbrook High, Scott was a senior at Germantown High, and they were brought together at Swan Records at Eighth and Fitzwater Streets.

After singing briefly with the group, Scott said, "I took a break for 10 years and replaced her in 1976."

That was virtually the end of Miss Pinkney's professional singing career, Scott said, though she joined a gospel choir "and continued to sing with them until she passed."

But her brother, Nathaniel, said she had a far longer career out of the spotlight.

After leaving the group, Miss Pinkney was a project coordinator for Opportunities Industrialization Center in North Philadelphia from 1979 to 1983.

In 1984, he said, she earned a master's degree in human services, which required no undergraduate degree, from Lincoln University.

After working as a personnel coordinator, Miss Pinkney was at the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania from 1989 to 1994, first as an administrative assistant, then an education coordinator.

Most recently, her brother said, she was an intake counselor for United Healthcare Services in Philadelphia, from 2001 to last month.

Besides her brother, Miss Pinkney is survived by nephew Milford Pinkney and niece Michele Pinkney.

A viewing will be from 9 to 11 a.m. Friday at Salem Baptist Church, 610 Summit Ave., Jenkintown, followed by an 11 a.m. funeral there. Burial will be in Ivy Hill Cemetery, 1201 Easton Rd., Philadelphia.