George Morton’s career nearly ended before it began. A tough Irish kid from Long Island, he’d sung in a doo-wop group and written a few songs, all dead on arrival. And so, in 1964, he found a new line of work—beating sailors in drinking contests. “Bartenders would call me in, and I’d take these guys’ money,” he says. He was broke, directionless, a retiree at age 19.

One winter morning, Morton hitchhiked into New York to see his friend Ellie Greenwich, who worked in the Brill Building, a songwriting factory that specialized in teen fantasies. Greenwich’s latest smash was the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby.”

“I’d never heard of the Brill Building,” Morton recalls. “But I’m seeing wall-to-wall gold records. Now I get nervous. Ellie was very nice. There was a guy playing piano with his back to me.” That guy, Greenwich’s husband and cowriter, Jeff Barry, suddenly turned and asked Morton, “What do you do for a living?”

The pop aspirant in Morton seized the moment: “I said, ‘Well, some people would say I’m a bum, which means I write songs, like you.’ He asked, ‘What kind of songs? And I said, ‘Hit songs!’” Barry, intrigued, commissioned a “hit song” on spec. The dare was on.

Of course, Morton had nothing more than a few loose ideas: “I didn’t know the rules of songwriting.” He called a friend who owned a recording studio, told him to get a band together and started looking for a group. He’d recently seen a singing quartet from Queens—Mary and Elizabeth Weiss and Margie and Mary Ann Ganser, fans of R&B and gospel and the Everly Brothers’ tight harmonies. “I went backstage and told ’em, ‘Take those Japanese dresses you’re wearing and rip ’em up to your armpits so people can see your tits when you twirl around.’”

“I was only, like, 14 years old!” Mary Weiss says, recalling Morton’s styling tip. But they jumped at the chance to record. Morton worked up to the last minute, finishing the lyrics in his car on the way to the studio. Such elusive, flaky ways won him his man-of-mystery nickname, Shadow. “He was always late,” Weiss says. “Which isn’t so great when it’s on your dime.”

The result was the spare, haunting “Remember (Walkin’ in the Sand),” in which Mary pines for a boy who sailed away and broke her heart, then flashes back to their first kiss on the beach. In the chorus, it’s just the girls’ voices, their fingers snapping and the cry of seagulls. (Sound effects would become a Shadow Morton trademark.) Packed with girl-group melodrama, it was a teenage opera. “I thought of it like acting,” Weiss says.

Morton scored a $250-a-week songwriting gig—and, eventually, a No. 5 hit. “I was loaded!” he recalls. He and the Shangri-Las had other successes—most famously, “Leader of the Pack”—before fading away. (Morton did go on to produce the New York Dolls’ second album.)

“Walkin’” may or may not have launched another career, though. “I kept having to slap the kid playing piano on the back of the head,” Morton recalls. “He was playing a goddamn symphony, but I only wanted one note. Turned out it was Billy Joel!” Weiss corroborates this, but Joel remains cagey. When asked a few years ago if “Walkin’ in the Sand” was his first recording session, the Piano Man offered a cryptic reply: “Only the Shadow knows.”

VITAL STATISTICS
Label Red Bird
Performers Mary Weiss (lead vocals); Elizabeth "Betty" Weiss, Marguerite "Margie" Ganser and Mary Ann Ganser (backing vocals)
Writer George "Shadow" Morton
Producer Morton
Chart debut August 22, 1964
Highest chart position 5