大象传媒

by Bob Stanley

I was lucky enough to meet Mary Weiss for lunch a few years back - she made sure I picked up the bill after her earlier run-ins with the music industry...

- Bob Stanley

The Ganser twins and the Weiss sisters were from the Cambria Heights district of Queens. As , their singles were the most intense and intriguing of the Girl Group genre, and released on the enigmatic Red Bird label (also home to the Dixie Cups' Chapel Of Love and Iko Iko). One of the odd things about the group was that their line-up seemed to change from photo to photo. Betty Weiss (sometimes dark-haired, sometimes blonde) was rarely in the shots, though on other occasions one of the twins dropped out (Marge or Mary Ann, don't ask me which). Their last single released in Britain, 1966's spoken word Past Present And Future, is Pete Townshend's favourite record of all time.

They'd originally been signed to the Smash label, but were credited as the Shangra La's (probably a simple mis-spelling) on their debut single Simon Says in 1963. Much better was the raucous Wishing Well, a Phil Spector-alike that deserved to be a hit in 1964. Everything changed when they met a local eccentric called George 'Shadow' Morton. Casually boasting one day, he had told songwriters Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich that he had written some potential hits, even though he'd never written a song in his life. When Barry called him out on his bragging, he hastily pulled some favours from friends and recorded a demo of Remember (Walkin' In The Sand) which he took to Greenwich and Barry's office a week later.

Ellie Greenwich's recollection of first hearing Remember (Walkin' In The Sand) was that it was seven minutes long! She also remembers thinking "Gee, that girl's voice is so strange, and the song is so interesting." With a bit of editing, the single came out on Leiber and Stoller's Red Bird label two weeks later, and quickly reached the US Top 10 and UK Top 20, taking the group from Cambria Heights to national TV overnight. "We didn't know anything about TV" said Mary Weiss. "We didn't have any make-up on and we shone like a bunch of headlights. The kids in the audience can tell if you're professional or amateur, and boy did we come on amateur." They came over to Britain to do a ten day promotional trip in October '64 as a trio - Mary Weiss stayed home, as she was still at school. Did any Avids get to meet them?

In spite of their success (Leader Of The Pack was a US number one, and a UK Top 20 hit in 1965, 1972 and 1976), The Shangri La's got a raw deal from their period in the spotlight; they made little money and even lost the right to use their name at one point. After Red Bird folded in 1966 they were signed to Mercury for two singles, both pretty good (check out the atmospheric I'll Never Learn, which sounds like Mary Weiss is singing on board the Marie Celeste) but neither were hits.

I was lucky enough to meet Mary Weiss for lunch a few years back - she made sure I picked up the bill after her earlier run-ins with the music industry. She was just about to release a solo album on the Norton label. Her singing voice had dropped an octave but her speaking voice was still very identifiably Queens. When I told her she was looking well she said "That's 'cos I work out three hours a day! How else d'you think I'd look like this?" The conversation turned to plastic surgery, her current job in real estate - anything, in fact, other than The Shangri La's history which she seemed keen to draw a veil over. The solo album came out, and then Mary disappeared once again. No one seems to have a forwarding address. The Shangri La's mystique remains intact.