Mary McCaslin was a pure-voiced folksinger who sang the pathetic laments of the waning Old West, reimagined pop and rock classics as mountain ballads, and was an innovator in open-tuning guitars. died October 2 at his home in Hemet, California. ., southeast of Los Angeles.
The cause was progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare neurological disorder similar to Parkinson’s disease, said her husband, Greg Alphatt.
McCaslin began his career in the mid-1960s at Troubadour, a legendary music incubator in West Hollywood. He played at the Monday Night Hoots, known as this club’s open his mic his night. TV monkey.
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band founder John McEwen and his then-girlfriend Penny Nichols were frequent stagemates.
“I thought for a second that we might be the next big thing or some other trio,” McEwen said in a telephone interview. She was a unique singer that sounded like Iris Demento before Iris Demento, or like Ginny Hawker, and she had a mountain voice that was really natural to me growing up in Southern California — Authentic It’s a very traditional Americana sound.
McCaslin was strict and focused on music, McEuen added. “She was different even back then in the ’60s, and all she cared about was getting her music as right as possible,” he said.
She would be a hard-working folk festival and coffee house favorite, if not a household name. “Way Out West” In 1974 she wrote about gamblers, rounders and outlaws, and in the title track heartbreak and disillusionment:
my family left home when i was a kid
All open and wild to head west
I couldn’t wait to ride my pony across the prairie
But we went down past the plains
To the plaster forest in the suburbs
All the people there jokingly embraced my dream
somehow i came to hate them
way out west
The album cover shows a young woman with a serious expression, her face framed by the style of the day, long hair and bangs draperies. In its review, Rolling Stone magazine noted her “clear, subtle and affecting vocals” and how “unconventional guitar tunings create quirky, ethereal melodies with striking beauty”. mentioned about
McCaslin, who also played banjo and ukulele, was self-taught, and her open tuning, tuning the strings like specific chords like Joni Mitchell did, made her guitar playing stand out.
“Joni’s tuning was more jazz-influenced,” says Folklore Productions/Furi Artists, who had managed McCaslin and her first husband, folk singer Jim Ringer, since the mid-’70s. President Mitch Greenhill said. opposite direction. They sounded more angular and more Celtic. And she was constantly adding tunes to her albums, always appreciated by aspiring musicians. ”
She recorded albums primarily on Philo, a small independent New England label. One newspaper called her “her L.A. cowgirl recording in Vermont.” Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote that she was known as the “Prairie Diva”.
In addition to her own songs, Ms. McCaslin sang Western standards like the Supremes and classics of pop and rock. “Without you my world is empty” and The Who’s “pinball wizardthat classic power rocker Ballad of Appalachia playing her clawhammer-style banjo.
As John Rockwell of The Times described her vocal style, her “pure and narrow soprano” is reminiscent of that of Kate Wolfe and Nancy Griffiths. Recorded by Russell, David Bromberg, Ms Wolfe and more.
McCaslin first met Ringer in 1972. Mr. Ringer is 11 years his senior, a surly, charming, rumpled folk singer with a honky-tonk style and a colorful biography. And they started performing and touring together. In contrast to her stark soprano and understated stage presence and his outlaw persona, when they recorded an album of duets they called it “Bramble and Rose”. They got married in 1978.
“McCaslin’s tug-of-war between her childhood dreams of the Old West and the reality of the New West is what gives her music a mythical resonance,” said Ringer and Ms. McCaslin in 1981 and 2012, respectively. When playing Bottom Line in 2016, Mr. Holden wrote, Manhattan. “Her perspective is reminiscent of a woman who grew up riding horses under the high plateau skies. Even her experiments on Miss McCaslin’s Motown tunes evoke her pathetic naivety.” .”
Her version of the Supremes’ hit “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” “turns the song from an urban teenage lament to a mountain-flavoured folk song of quiet, grown-up despair.” he said.
In her own songs, Ms. McCaslin lamented the increasing urbanization of the American West.
“I’ve always been fascinated by the deserts and beautiful mesas of Arizona and Utah,” she told Holden. It’s funny how many of the people who sing about cowboys today probably have never ridden horses.”
Mary Noel McCaslin was born on December 22, 1946 in Indianapolis to an unmarried mother and was adopted by Russell McCaslin, a factory worker, and Lorraine (Taylor) McCaslin, a housewife. She grew up on her beach in Redondo, California, where she listened to early rock and roll, bluegrass and country music. Her father often took her to concerts.
She inspired the popular mid-century ballads of country and western singer Marty Robbins and songs of British crooner Petula Clark. She bought her first guitar at age 15 with babysitting money, and played her first at the club Paradox in her County of Orange at age 18.
In addition to her husband, Ms. McCaslin has a younger sister, Rose Brass, and a brother, Eric Mauser. She and Mr. Ringer divorced in 1989.
On her 1994 album, Broken Promises, McCaslin wrote about heartache, parting, wariness, and surprise at a new love (Mr. Arrufat, a music producer and longtime friend).about the song “Someone like me” Her longing to know her biological parents:
Cause I’ll give you almost everything
To see the family tree
never seen in my life
someone like me
In 2013, she met her birth mother, Wu Wer Na Chasing Bear, a member of the Kiowa Apache tribe, and her brother, Eric. According to Arrufat, Ooh Wah Nah Chasing Bear gave her daughter her Native American necklace and asked her wife if it would be appropriate to give her Native American name.
Ooh Wah Nah Chasing Bear approved his choice of Mary Noel Singing Bear, he said. Her former manager, Greenhill, said McCaslin, who has made a career singing Western images and themes, has turned out to be, as he puts it, “a true Native American artist.” surprised.