About Opentopia
Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

The Shangri-Las

Encyclopedia : T : TH : THE : The Shangri-Las

The Shangri-Las on the cover of a modern collection of their works. From left to right: Marguerite "Marge" Ganser, Mary Weiss, and Mary Ann Ganser.
The Shangri-Las on the cover of a modern collection of their works. From left to right: Marguerite "Marge" Ganser, Mary Weiss, and Mary Ann Ganser.

The Shangri-Las were an American pop music girl group of the 1960s. Between 1964 and 1966 they charted with a string of unusually convincing and heartbreaking teen melodramas that remain unequalled in pop.

The group were formed at Andrew Jackson High School in Queens, New York as the Bon Bons in 1963. They consisted of two sets of sisters: Mary (lead singer) and Elizabeth "Liz/Betty" Weiss, and identical twins Marguerite "Marge" and Mary Ann Ganser. More often than not the girls appeared as a trio despite there being four singers.

In April of 1964, since the girls were still minors, their parents signed for them with Red Bird Records; Mary was 15, Betty was 17, and the Ganser twins were 16. That same year, they had their first hit, "Remember (Walking in the Sand)" (US #5, UK #14), after being hired by the producer George "Shadow" Morton. Their songs for Morton featured lavish production with heavy orchestration and sound effects; their biggest hit, the renowned death disc "Leader of the Pack" (US #1, UK #11), climaxes with the sounds of roaring motorcycles and breaking glass. UK reissues of the single peaked at #3 in 1972 and at #7 in 1976.

The band continued to chart with a run of fairly successful US hit records, specialising in adolescent themes such as alienation, loneliness, abandonment and death. Now-classic recordings include "Give Him a Great Big Kiss", "Out in the Streets", "Give Us Your Blessings", "I Can Never Go Home Anymore", "Long Live Our Love", "He Cried" and "Past, Present and Future". The B-sides "The Train from Kansas City", "Dressed in Black", "Paradise" and "I'll Never Learn" rank as four of pop's more distinctive flipsides.

The Shangri-Las' two 1966 releases on Red Bird failed to make the top 50. That same year the band left Red Bird and Morton after the label folded. At the beginning of 1967, Marge decided to leave the group. Despite signing to Mercury Records that year, the group had no further hits. In 1968, they disbanded.

Mary Ann died in 1970, though some websites claim 1971. Accounts vary as to the cause: Some say it was a drug overdose [link], others say it was a seizure [link], still others say it was encephalitis [link]. Marge succumbed to breast cancer on July 28, 1996 at age 48.

The Shangri-Las' 1966 spoken-word cult hit "Past, Present and Future" — with music from Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" — was effectively covered in 2004 by ex ABBA singer Agnetha Fältskog on her 2004 album, "My Colouring Book". Along with the tragic ten-hanky drama "I Can Never Go Home Anymore", the Shangri-Las' original 1966 single occasionally appears in music critics' all-time-favourites lists.

Since the 1980s the group has had to deal with a trio calling themselves the Shangri Las, who have nothing to do with the original group. The tribute act was put together by Dick Fox.

In March 2006 Norton Records announced that Mary Weiss will be recording a solo CD, due in late 2006.

Discography

Standard albums Compilations Singles

References

External links

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: