Mac McCulloch

Tue, 03/29/2022 - 10:43
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Frequently seen as the quiet man of The Yetties, Mac was often the backbone of the group throughout their 50-year history

Malcolm – “Mac” to everyone – McCulloch died 10 days before Christmas after a few years of ill health and a final, mercifully brief, battle with cancer.

Frequently seen as the quiet man of The Yetties, Mac was often the backbone of the group throughout their 50-year history, unobtrusively utilising his skill with stringed instruments to create the changing moods required for the wide variety of music produced by the band, and occasionally chipping in with a warm, useful vocal or an often devastatingly humorous aside.

He was by nature a quiet man who valued his family time, but he had an unexpectedly quick and acute sense of humour which belied his laid-back manner. His family had come to Yetminster in Dorset when Mac was young, and he’d joined the village Scout troop, along with Pete Shutler, Bonny Sartin and Bob Common. They all joined the Yetminster and Ryme Intrinseca Junior Folk Dance Display Team, where they augmented their dancing skills by learning to play the music. The group appeared at festivals around the country and at one such event the MC decided that the cumbersome name could be abbreviated to “The Yetties”. By 1967 their success as a folk group persuaded them to turn professional, and Mac’s course in life was set for the next 44 years, touring world-wide and releasing dozens of recordings.

Through it all, Mac’s easy manner and sunny character was a major part of what anchored the group so firmly to their roots and appealed to their audiences.

His family was a very important anchor throughout his career, and condolences go to his son Michael, daughter Jo and the rest of the family.

John Waltham