Mary Weiss

Mary Weiss
Weiss, 1964
Background information
Born	December 28, 1948 Jamaica, Queens, New York, United States
Genres	Pop
Occupation(s)	Singer
Instrument(s)	Vocals
Years active	1964–69, 1989, 2006–present
Labels	Red Bird, Norton

Mary Weiss (born December 28, 1948) is an American pop music vocalist, best known as the lead singer of the Shangri-Las in the 1960s. She then vanished from the music scene for decades, returning in 2007 to record her first solo album with Norton Records.

Background

Growing up in Queens, Weiss, her older sister Elizabeth (known as Betty) and her older brother George lived in Cambria Heights. She sang in school plays and church choirs. Additionally, she listened to her brother and his friends perform popular songs of the day; George being an Elvis fan. Mary appreciated such performers as Neil Sedaka and The Everly Brothers; she attended her first Everly Brothers concert in 1963 at Freedomland U.S.A. at the age of 14.

Early recordings

After Weiss and her sister Betty became good friends with twins Mary Ann and Margie Ganser in grammar school, the four of them 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. After recording demos and making it to the Brill Building in 1964 (and signing with Red Bird Records), they recorded songs: "Remember (Walking in the Sand)", which was their first hit, and "Leader of the Pack", which went to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 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. Weiss went to San Francisco to try a different lifestyle. She later came back to New York and occasionally gave shows with the Shangri-Las during the 1970s which led to a comeback attempt with Sire Records in 1977. In 1989, the Shangri-Las reunited one last time for Cousin Brucie's Palisades Park Reunion show at The Meadowlands in New Jersey.

New career

Weiss took a job as a purchasing agent in New York City in 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." She later moved up to be the chief purchasing agent and ran the commercial furniture dealership. In the late 1980s, she managed a furniture store and was an interior designer. By 2001, she was a furniture consultant to New York businesses.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

In 2019, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame honored the Shangri-Las' "Leader of the Pack", on which Weiss sang lead, in the Hall's Singles category.

Going solo

In 2005, Weiss left her job in commercial interiors to get back to music. In March 2007, Norton Records released Dangerous Game, a critically acclaimed solo album, on which she was backed by The Reigning Sound. She has been performing elsewhere in the United States, and in Spain and France.