Mary Weiss, Lead Singer of Girl Group Greats the Shangri-Las, Dies at 75
by Jeff Tamarkin
Mary Weiss, the lead vocalist for the hitmaking 1960s girl group The Shangri-Las, has died. Her death, on Jan. 19, 2024, was reported on Facebook by Miriam Linna of Norton Records, the label for which Weiss recorded her only solo album, Dangerous Game, in 2007. No cause or place of death were cited in Linna’s post. Weiss had just turned 75 on Dec. 28, 2023.
Stevie Van Sandt of the E Street Band paid tribute to Weiss and the Shangri-Las on X, calling them ““one of the essential Girl Groups of the ‘60s that empowered young girls to dream bigger at a time when society limited women to be secretaries. Their brilliant records with Shadow Morton defined aural cinema.”
Weiss’ voice could be either tough or sweet, at times alternating between the two within the same song. Wearing her blond hair long, straight and parted to the side, at a time when most of her peers still sported hairsprayed bouffants atop their heads, and dressed in tight leather pants and boots, Weiss was a fashion trendsetter as well as the voice behind such era-defining hits as “Leader of the Pack,” “Remember (Walking in the Sand)” and “Give Him a Great Big Kiss,” all impacting between the summers of 1964 and ’66.
When her run of hits with the group was over, Weiss withdrew from the music business nearly entirely, working in fields far removed from entertainment, rarely performing and refraining from recording until her brief re-emergence four decades later. After that, she returned to her life outside of the industry again, although the Shangri-Las’ influence only grew after their demise, inspiring groups such as Blondie and the Runaways, among many others.
Weiss and her older sister Elizabeth, known as Betty, grew up in the Cambria Heights area of Queens in New York City. The sisters, along with the identical twins Marge and Mary Ann Ganser, formed the Shangri-Las at Andrew Jackson High School in Queens (taking the name from a local restaurant), in 1963, when Mary Weiss was only 15, and were discovered by Artie Ripp, a music business executive and producer.
After recording a couple of non-charting singles, the quartet signed to Red Bird Records, a new label formed by the songwriting/production pair of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller along with executive George Goldner. After Red Bird’s first major hit, the #1 Dixie Cups single “Chapel of Love,” the Shangri-Las were the next to find success, first with “Remember,” written by George “Shadow” Morton. That single reached #5 and was followed by “Leader of the Pack,” which made it to #1. That song, chronicling the singer’s infatuation for, and the death of, a motorcycle-riding boy, was co-written by Morton (who also produced it, as he did all of the group’s subsequent hits), Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. It reached #1 in late 1964, proving that not all American groups suffered at the height of the British Invasion. “Leader of the Pack” later served as the title of a hit Broadway musical.
Related: George “Shadow” Morton later produced the Vanilla Fudge
The Shangri-Las’ next hit, “Give Him a Great Big Kiss,” both written and produced by Morton, and released at the very end of 1964, made #18 in Billboard. (The New York Dolls later paid tribute to the song in the intro to their “Looking for a Kiss.”) It was followed by several other notable singles, of which only one, “I Can Never Go Home Anymore,” reached the top 10, peaking at #6.
Mary Weiss (right) with the Shangri-Las
In 1967, with Red Bird having been sold and then killed off, the Shangri-Las signed to Mercury Records, but there were no further Hot 100 hits forthcoming. By the end of the ’60s, having been kept to a grueling schedule of touring and recording that occupied them through their late teen years, the group—already reduced to a trio as Marge Ganser had departed early on—packed it in. As Weiss told the New York Times in 2007, “Everybody around us was suing each other. Basically to me, the litigation just got so insane, and it wasn’t about music anymore.”
Mary Ann Ganser died in 1971, and although the surviving three performed at CBGB in 1977 (and performed again at an oldies concert in 1989) and considered recording a new album, the project never took off. Marge Ganser died in 1996. Betty Weiss is now the only surviving member.
Watch Weiss sing “Remember (Walking in the Sand)” in 2008
4 Comments so far
Jump into a conversationThose girls were fine and tough as nails, vulgarians all. That’s why I love them.❤✌
I recall an episode of the TV game show “I’ve Got a Secret” where one of the panelists – Betsy Palmer, I think – gave a dramatic reading of what turned out to be (and this was the “secret”) the lyrics of “Leader of the Pack.”
RIP Mary. I’ll miss your sweet little birthday messages on Facebook. I always felt honored to receive those.