ABSTRACT
The Shangri-Las were a group of suburbanites from Queens who began singing together when they met at public high school in 1963. Although the group was officially a quartet, right from the beginning it was common for only three singers to participate in many performances and recording sessions, usually Mary Ann and Margie Ganser and Mary Weiss, whose older sister Betty was also a group member. Likewise, publicity shots for the group throughout its career sometimes show all four singers, sometimes only Mary Weiss and the Gansers, and sometimes one of the Gansers and the two Weiss sisters. Mary Weiss, who sang lead on all the best-known recordings, provides continuity through the various incarnations of the group, and the most typical publicity shots of the Shangri-Las depict her flanked by the Gansers, who cultivated their resemblance with identical hairstyles and a tendency to pose in mirror image to one another. The balanced effect is a pleasing one, clearly identifying Mary Weiss as a leader supported by matching bookends. In performance, of course, this arrangement changed so that the Gansers stood together, slightly apart from the lead singer, in order better to hear one another as they provided backing harmonies.
