As a singer/songwriter who wrote story-songs combining elements of country, folk, and pop, Mary McCaslin was one of the most appealing contemporary folk performers of the 1970s. Since the country-folk singer worked totally outside of the Nashville sphere, singing of prairies and Old West images in almost mythic terms, her audience was confined to the folk circuit (though within that boundary, it was very wide). Yet her ability to appeal to rock and pop listeners helped pave the way for country-folk-pop stars like Nanci Griffith and Mary-Chapin Carpenter. After releasing her first album, Goodnight, Everybody, in 1969, she delivered a half-dozen more LPs through the early '80s before her output significantly slowed as she focused on family life. Broken Promises eventually appeared in 1994, with her final album, a set of covers entitled Better Late Than Never, arriving in 2006.