Mary McCaslin obit

Folksinger Mary McCaslin Has Died (December 22, 1946 – October 2, 2022)

 

She was not on the list.

The folksinger and songwriter Mary McCaslin died over the weekend at the age of 76. She had long suffered from Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP), a rare brain disorder.

McCaslin was born in 1946 in Beechgrove, Indiana. She was adopted and her parents moved the family to Redondo Beach, California, when McCaslin was just six years old.

McCaslin grew up with a great interest in music and began playing guitar as a teenager, making her debut onstage when she was 18. She soon began performing in the storied folk scene at the Los Angeles Troubadour club, where she became connected with a record producer. She recorded her first album in 1969 and released ten studio albums, plus two best-of collections, culminating with 2006’s Better Late Than Never.

McCaslin was known for her simple but poetic songwriting, characteristic folk vocals, and open guitar tunings. Her music was beloved by fans and fellow musicians alike. Indeed, several contemporary artists recorded McCaslin’s songs, so to pay tribute to her memory we’ve collected some in the list below, beginning with a favorite from McCaslin herself.

Her musical development was influenced by the western ballads of Marty Robbins, the guitar playing of Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell, the singing and banjo playing of Hedy West, and the vocal inflections of the Beatles and the Bee Gees. Writing of McCaslin's Way Out West LP, Robert Christgau said in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), "Without self-dramatization—she favors plain melodies and commonplace imagery and her singing is gamely unhistrionic—this woman explores Joni Mitchell's territory with equal intelligence, more charm, and no drums."

Her songs have been recorded by Tom Russell, Bill Staines, Gretchen Peters, David Bromberg, Kate Wolf, Stan Rogers, and Còig. The Grand Canyon Railroad used her song "Last Cannonball" for its promotional television ad.

McCaslin met singer-songwriter Jim Ringer in 1972, and began performing with him. They married in 1978, and as a duo released the album The Bramble & the Rose. They moved to San Bernardino, California. McCaslin separated from him in 1989.[2] Ringer died in 1992 after a long illness, and McCaslin provided the liner notes for a retrospective album of his songs: The Best of Jim Ringer.

McCaslin was busy with family matters for most of the 1980s, finally releasing a new album, Broken Promises, in 1994. She suffered from progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a rare neurological condition that can cause problems with balance, movement, vision, speech and swallowing. She died from PSP in Hemet, California on October 2, 2022, at the age of 75.