Mary Weiss RIP Updated

Mary Weiss, lead singer of girl group the Shangri-Las, has died aged 75. The group had a run of magnificently broody and sometimes downright gloomy records in the mid sixties which epiomised teenage angst and emotion. Mary and her sister Betty came from Queens and joined with twins Marge and Mary Ann Ganser in 1963 to form a group which they named the Shangri-Las after a local restaurant. They were discovered by Artie Ripp who arranged a record deal with Kama Sutra records. Their first recordings included 'Simon Says' and 'Wishing Well' and in January 1964, when Mary was just 15, they met up with George 'Shadow' Morton who played their demo of 'Remember (Walkin' In The Sand') to Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, owners of Red Bird records. The record was a smash hit and was followed by any even bigger one with 'Leader Of The Pack', the archetypal 'death disc' which was a huge hit in the US, the UK and elsewhere. A succession of dramatic singles followed, including 'Give Him A Great Big Kiss', with its intro line 'When I say I'm in love you best believe I'm in love L-U-V', 'Give Us Your Blessings', the dramatic 'I Can Never Go Home Any More', 'Long Live Our Love', 'He Cried' and 'Past Present and Future', spoken over Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata'. Betty left the group for a while resulting in many photos showing just three members, but returned before the Ganser sisters eventually left and the group broke up in 1968. Mary retired from the music business and there was a final reunion of the Shangri-Las in 1989. She recorded an album for Norton Records in 2007 entitled 'Dangerous Game' and I saw Mary perform at the Ponderosa Stomp in 2008 (pictured above) where she sang several Shangri-Las songs including, of course, 'Leader Of The Pack'. RIP to Mary - and that's called Sad.

Another recent death is that of reggae singer Pluto Shervington. whose 1970s hits included 'Dat' and 'Ram Goat Liver'.

The bad start to the year has continued with the news that jazz, soul and blues singer Marlena Shaw has died at the age of 81. She began as a jazz singer but her career took off in the late sixties with her soul/funk version of 'California Soul'. She moved from the Cadet label to Blue Note and later to Columbia, Verve and Polydor as her career progressed, with her best known tracks including 'Mercy Mercy Mercy' and 'Go Away Little Boy'. I saw Marlena several times during the nineties, including one memorable night at the short-lived Rhythmic in Islington when she co-starred with Jean Carne. Photo below shows Marlena at the Jazz Factory in Camden in 1993.