Kuumbwa Jazz to hold a tribute show
The Rotary Club of Freedom has assembled a group of local musicians to pay tribute to a beloved once-local folk singer who died last year while also raising funds for the victims of March's flooding of Pajaro.
Nineteen musicians will be performing in honor of Mary McCaslin, who died of complications from progressive supranuclear palsy in October 2022, at Kuumbwa Jazz Dec. 3.
McCaslin, who performed in the Santa Cruz area for many years and lived there for 27 years, began performing at the Troubadour in West Hollywood in the mid-'60s for its open-mic nights known as Monday Night Hoots, hosted by former Monkee Michael Nesmith. She released her debut album, “Goodnight Everybody,” in 1969, which featured covers such as “Help!” and “Blackbird” by The Beatles and “You Keep Me Hangin' On” by The Supremes. Starting with 1973's “Way Out West,” she began writing her own songs and expanding upon the Old West-inspired folk sound of her debut, earning acclaim from music publications and singer/songwriter peers.
Throughout it all, McCaslin became a mainstay in Santa Cruz. She and her then-husband Jim Ringer would duet at UC Santa Cruz concerts and performed at a fundraiser to establish the Santa Cruz Mountains Community Theater in 1977. Following her divorce from Ringer, she moved to the area in 1989 where she hosted a radio show on KZSC titled “Fat Farm,” taught banjo and guitar, worked at Sylvan Music and performed at the “No Nukes” rally at San Lorenzo Park in 1995 alongside the likes of Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, David Crosby and Graham Nash to mark the anniversary of the 50th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She was also a Gail Rich Award recipient in 1998 for her contributions to the local culture and wrote columns for the Sentinel from 2000 to 2013. During her time in Santa Cruz, she would also marry longtime friend Greg Arrufat.
McCaslin recorded her final album “Better Late Than Never” in 2006, and she and Arrufat moved from Santa Cruz in 2016. A year later, she was diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare neurological condition that im