When the mid-60s oeuvre of the Shangri-Las is discussed, attention often focusses on the input of their producer, George “Shadow” Morton. You can see why. From the moment you dropped the needle on the New York City girl group’s first hit, 1964’s Remember (Walking in the Sand), Morton’s production style was hard to ignore. Working, so he claimed, without any experience or musical ability, he was not a man at home with subtlety or good taste. He drenched everything in echo and slathered on dramatic sound effects: screaming gulls and crashing waves, thunderclaps, the whistle and clatter of departing trains, the squeal of tyres and the crunch of vehicles colliding at speed.
Perhaps Morton thought you needed to stand out in a US pop world that had just been turned on its head – Remember (Walking in the Sand) was recorded a few months after the Beatles’ first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show and released into a Hot 100 where the British invasion was in full swing: six singles by the Beatles, two by the Rolling Stones and the Dave Clarke 5, hits for the Searchers, the Animals, Cilla Black and Dusty Springfield – in which case his plan worked. Remember (Walking in the Sand) was the first in a string of Shangri-Las hits over the next two years.
