Mary Weiss , born 1948, Jamaica, Queens, New York, found fame in the 1960s as the lead singer with The Shangri-Las. She then vanished from the music scene for decades, returning in 2007 to record her first solo album with Norton Records. Growing up in Queens, Mary, her older sister Elizabeth and her older brother George lived on 220th Street in Cambria Heights, where Mary sang in school plays and church choirs. She listened to her brother and his friends perform popular songs of the day; George was an Elvis Presley fan. Mary appreciated such performers as Neil Sedaka and the Everly Brothers; she attended her first concert of the Everly Brothers in 1963.

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Early recordings

After Mary, Betty, Mary Ann and Margie became good friends at Andrew Jackson High School, they sang at local dances and hops. That brought them to the attention of local producer Artie Ripp, who later signed them on to Kama Sutra Productions. From doing demos to making it to the Brill building in 1964 and signing with Red Bird Records), they came up with songs like "Leader Of The Pack" that had made its way to #1 on the charts in 1964.

With their growing popularity, the Shangri-Las became a leading girl group in the 1960s. After several years of the grind, they split in 1968 and went their separate ways. Mary Ann Ganser died in 1970. Mary went to San Francisco to try a different lifestyle and often went roller blading in Golden Gate Park. She later came back to New York. In 1989, the Shangri-Las reunited for a concert and haven't performed since. Marge Ganser died in 1996.

New career

Mary took a job as a secretary and later a purchasing agent in lower Manhattan, as she recalled, "I went to work for an architectural firm, and I was seriously into it. Then I got into commercial interiors, huge projects, buildings." ^[1]

In 2001, she was a near victim of the 9/11 attack while walking to work and could have been killed by falling debris.

Going solo

In 2005, Mary left her job at Furniture Consultants to get back to music. In March 2007, Norton Records released Dangerous Game , a solo album by Mary Weiss (backed by The Reigning Sound). She has been performing in the United States, Spain and France and is working on a new album for 2010.

References

1. "Mary Weiss Interview", Norton Records, 2006.