R.I.P.: Record Producer Shadow Morton Dead At 72

Recorded producer and songrwriter George 'Shadow' Morton has died.  He died Thursday at age 71 in Laguna Beach, Calif. The cause was cancer, said Amy Krakow, a family friend.

He is best known for his influential work in the 1960s and the introduction of girl group The Shangri-Las to the pop music world.

Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, and then Hicksville, Long Island, he formed a doo-wop group, the Marquees, at school. He became friendly with Ellie Greenwich, and did drop-in visits to her and her writing partner (later husband) Jeff Barry when they were working at New York songwriters' 'Mecca', the Brill Building.

In 1964, he wrote and produced "Remember (Walking In The Sand)" with a long-shot, unknown girl-group local club act that he admired, The Shangri-Las (according to Morton, with the then-unknown Billy Joel on piano in the demo recording and offered the demo recording to established industry guru Jerry Leiber who was then setting up Red Bird Records.

The recording "Remember (Walking In The Sand)" by the Shangri-Las reached #3 on the US pop charts in 1964, and was a worldwide teen recording hit that launched the Shangri-Las as a chart-topping recording group.

Morton was transformed overnight from a credential-less industry 'wannabe' into a teen recording songwriter and recording producer sensation—a pop recording industry 'wunderkind'—one of pop recording industry's often-told, long-odds 'success stories'.

In 1967, his production of Janis Ian's "Society's Child" finally became a hit record. Janis was 16-years-old.

The same year, he discovered a group called the Pidgeons, who became Vanilla Fudge, and produced their first three albums, which included their hit containing "You Keep Me Hangin' On."  

In the 1970s he worked with Iron Butterfly, and even though the group gave an interview to Mix Magazine crediting Morton with producing the hit track "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida".

In later years, Morton, who underwent treatment for alcoholism in the mid-1980s and remained sober to the end of his life, had a second career as a designer of golf clubs.

He never abandoned songwriting. At his death, Krakow said, Mr. Morton had more than 300 songs to his credit, most unrecorded.