The Singer of Shangri-Las Mary Weiss, passes away at 75. Let’s talk about the cause of death cause and the announcement of the obituary.
Mary Weiss dies at 75: Cause of death and obituary announcement
One of the truly iconic girl groups of the early 1960s, the Shangri-Las, with hits like “Leader of the Pack,” “Great Big Kiss,” “Remember (Walking in the Sand),” and “Heaven Only Knows,” was lead singer and frontwoman Mary Weiss. She passed away.
Miriam Linna of Norton Records, which released Weiss’s lone solo album in 2007, confirmed her death to Variety. Weiss was 75 years old; no cause of death was given.
Linna remarked, “To both young men and women of my generation and of all generations, Mary was an icon, a hero, and a heroine.”
The Shangri-Las, along with the Ronettes, are the ones who best embodied the girl group era. Weiss was the focal point of their look and sound, with her long blonde hair that attracted countless crushes during the era and her tart, youthful, yearning voice that erupted from transistor and car radios.
Their prime only lasted from 1964 and 1965, but it made a lasting impression because of a series of outstanding pop songs produced by George “Shadow” Morton, Ellie Greenwich, and Jeff Barry.
They set the standard for innumerable imitators with their song “Leader of the Pack,” which became an iconic teen death epic and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Their songs demonstrated a complex yet extreme sexuality for the time, with many of them centered around star-crossed relationships with bad boys.
During the “Great Big Kiss” call-and-answer segment, Weiss’s bandmates ask her about her crush. They say, “I have to look up.” “Is he tall?”
Weiss and her sister Betty attended the same high school as the twins Margie and Mary-Ann Ganser, who would go on to form their band, while growing up in the Queens borough of New York City.
The four were discovered by producer Artie Ripp when they began performing at local nightclubs in 1963. After he arranged for Kama Sutra to sign the group’s first recording contract, “Simon Says,” their debut album, was released in December 1963.
Still, Phil Spector associate “Shadow” Morton picked the girls to record and perform his song “Remember (Walking in the Sand).” Something flashed like lightning.
The song, which Aerosmith later covered, launched the group and peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1964. Later in the year, the Shangri-La reached its highest ranking at No. 1 with “Leader of the Pack,” a miniature teen opera with a thunderous motorcycle-rev sound effect and a dramatic spoken introduction.
