The Shangri-Las

The Shangri-Las were an American girl group who were popular in the 1960s. The Shangs were two sets of sisters, the Weiss sisters Mary and Betty and the Ganser sisters Marge and Mary Ann.

When still teenagers, they signed with Red Bird Records and came under the tutelage of producer George “Shadow” Morton, who bedecked their melodramatic vocals with all manner of production tricks and sound effects—motorcycles revving on “Leader of the Pack”, train whistles on “The Train from Kansas City”, seagulls on “Remember (Walkin' in the Sand)”.

At the height of their success, they performed with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and James Brown. But within a couple years of their first appearance on the charts, Betty Weiss left the group, and by 1968 the trio disintegrated. Mary Ann Ganser died in 1970, so by the end of the decade, they no longer recorded or performed together. There was a brief reunion in the mid-1970s of the surviving Shangs, and the group last performed in the late 1980s. Their style of theatrical pop remains highly influential to this day.