Stories from Dylan’s Instagram: The Shangri-Las — Shadows in the Street
What: A video from April 21, 1965 of the Shangri-Las’ performance of “Out in the Streets” on Shindig! Betty Weiss had temporarily left the group, so the Shangri-Las appeared as a trio. Posted by Dylan’s Instagram account May 23, 2025.
Why: There could be several reasons. Shangri-La is a recording studio in Malibu, leased by The Band in 1974, and where Bob Dylan lived in a tent on the property for a time. But except for both studio and girl group taking their respective names from the fabled city of Lost Horizon, there’s no other connection between the two.
It’s probably only a coincidence that all the members of the Shangri-Las attended Andrew Jackson High School in Queens, New York.
It’s possible Bob Dylan also has a soft spot for teenage tragedy songs. As a teenager, he surely heard one of the first, “Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots,” which became a hit right after James Dean died. The genre is best known for the Shangri-Las’ “Leader of the Pack” and arguably ended with the song featured on Dylan’s Instagram, “Out in the Streets.”
The architect of the Shangri-Las was one George “Shadow” Morton, a hard-drinking producer who possessed the ability to compose and arrange complex, layered musical pieces entirely in his head, despite being unable to read music or play an instrument. In 1964, Morton was seeking an opportunity with Red Bird Records, a new label founded by industry legends Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.
To create a demo that would showcase his songwriting and production skills, Morton recruited four girls from Queens who he had seen perform locally. Schoolmates at Andrew Jackson High School, the Shangri-Las were two pairs of sisters who had started singing together: Mary Weiss and her older sister Elizabeth “Betty” Weiss, alongside identical twins Marguerite “Marge” Ganser and Mary Ann Ganser. All were remarkably young. When they signed their contract with Red Bird in April 1964, Mary was just 15, the Ganser twins were 16, and Betty was 17.
According to Mary Weiss, at the time the group didn’t even have a name. Driving to their demo session in Long Island and debating various options, the girls spotted a restaurant called Shangri-La and decided to adopt its name. Morton had them record a song he had just written, “Remember (Walking in the Sand),” which may or may not have featured a then-unknown session musician on piano named Billy Joel. The demo was a hit with Leiber, who hired Morton as a staff producer and immediately signed The Shangri-Las to Red Bird.
Morton’s production style was to treat each song as a soundtrack for a cinematic short story. Starting with “Remember (Walking in the Sand),” his recordings featured a palette of sound effects that were integral to the narrative. For “Remember (Walking in the Sand),” he incorporated the cries of seagulls and the sound of crashing waves to evoke a sense of desolate, windswept memory. For the Shangri-Las’ biggest hit, “Leader of the Pack,” Morton famously brought a motorcycle into the hall of the recording studio to capture the authentic roar of its engine, punctuating the song’s climax with the sound of screeching tires and a metallic crash.
Queens of the Death Disc
The Shangri-Las rose to prominence during the peak of a peculiar musical subgenre of the late 1950s through early ’60s: the teenage tragedy song. Tagged by deejays as “death discs” and “splatter platters,” these were sentimental ballads lamenting teenage death in the most melodramatic fashion possible. The genre explored common themes of star-crossed lovers, parental disapproval, reckless youth, and fatal accidents usually involving cars and motorcycles.
One of the first of the splatter platters was “Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots” a teenage tragedy song written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Recorded by The Cheers, it went to #6 on the Billboard Best Selling singles chart in the fall of 1955, becoming Leiber and Stoller’s first top ten pop hit. In 1956, French chanteuse and Bob Dylan favorite, Edith Piaf recorded a French translation of the song entitled “L’ Homme à la Moto,” which became one of her biggest selling singles.
The song tells the story of a motorcycle rider, described as “the terror of Highway 101,” and his loyal but neglected girlfriend, Mary Lou. In the song she pleads with him : “I’ve got a feeling if you ride tonight I’ll grieve,” but he ignores her and “hit a screamin’ diesel that was California bound.” When investigators arrive at the scene of the collision, they find no trace of the motorcycle or rider except for his clothes. “Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots” was the first song to chart about motorcycles and the “new” motorcyclists epitomized by Marlon Brando’s “The Wild One,” earning it the reputation as the first biker song. Its popularity coincided with the death of teen idol James Dean in an automobile crash in the week following the record’s release.
The Shangri-Las’ Trifecta of Tragedy
While many artists had hits in the genre, The Shangri-Las became its undisputed queens through their three signature tragedy songs:
- “Leader of the Pack” (1964): The Shangri-Las signature song and the definitive death disc, a number-one hit that immortalized their sound. The song opens with the now-iconic spoken-word line, “Is she really going out with him?”. It tells the classic tale of a good girl falling for a bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks, only to be forced by her disapproving parents to end the relationship. His subsequent death in a rainy-night motorcycle crash, punctuated by Morton’s sound effects, became one of the most memorable moments in death disc history.
- “I Can Never Go Home Anymore” (1965): This Top 10 hit explored a different form of tragedy. The song is a mostly spoken-word narrative from a girl who has run away from home. Her defiance leads to the ultimate emotional consequence: her mother dies of a broken heart. The protagonist is left not with a dramatic memory of a crash, but with a lifetime of haunting guilt, a feeling chillingly underscored by the song’s haunting lullaby refrain.
- “Give Us Your Blessings” (1965): Though less famous than “Leader,” this song is considered by many to be an equally brilliant and perhaps even better entry in the genre. It tells the story of a young couple who, denied their parents’ blessing to marry, elope. Overcome with tears as they drive away, they miss a detour sign and are killed in a crash. Morton’s production is at its most operatic here, employing booming thunder effects and the ominous clang of church bells to create an atmosphere of inescapable doom.
“Out in the Streets”
Released in April 1965 as the group’s fifth single, “Out in the Streets” was penned by the formidable Brill Building duo Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry and produced by Shadow Morton. It was only a minor commercial success, peaking at a modest number 53 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Part of the reason why “Out in the Streets” wasn’t a hit is its theme, which while following the teenage tragedy song trope — girl meets boy and things fall apart — has the twist that the girl herself is the tragedy’s cause. Unlike most of her spiritual sisters, she has successfully reformed her rebellious boyfriend. He no longer hangs around with the old gang or wears his dirty old black boots.
That might sound like a happy ending, but not for a teenage girl who in her heart wants a bad boy. By taming her boyfriend, she has extinguished the very wildness that made her fall in love with him in the first place. The tragedy is not that her bad boy can’t be changed, but that he can. In the end she sets him free because his heart belongs “out in the street.”
A pretty song, but a song hitting a bit too close to home for its audience, who liked the idea of falling in love with a rebel, but didn’t want to see him domesticated.
Live and In Black and White: The Shangri-Las on Shindig!
Airing on ABC from 1964 to 1966, Shindig! was a high-energy television showcase for popular music. Hosted by Los Angeles disc jockey Jimmy O’Neill, the program featured a live audience and a house band of elite session musicians who would later be known as “The Wrecking Crew.” On April 21, 1965, the group performed a trio of songs, including a cover of “Shout,” “Out in the Streets,” and the fan favorite “Give Him a Great Big Kiss.”
Due to Betty Weiss’ temporary departure from the group during late 1964 and early 1965, many of their most famous television appearances, including on Shindig!, featured them as a trio composed of Mary Weiss and the Ganser twins.
By 1968, the group had disbanded, their decline precipitated by the financial collapse of their creative home, Red Bird Records, in 1966 and that the American girl-group sound was being eclipsed by the British Invasion and the rise of rock.
After the group disbanded, the members largely retreated from the public eye. The story of the group was marked by further real-life tragedy with the deaths of Mary Ann Ganser from encephalitis in 1970 and her twin sister Marge Ganser in 1996. Mary Weiss married and built a successful career in furniture and interior design, largely staying away from music until a well-received solo album in 2007. With the passing of Mary Weiss in January 2024, Betty Weiss became the sole surviving member of the original quartet.
Their music was a fleeting shadow over the pop charts of the mid-1960s, but the shadow’s image remains.
