Pick Up the Pieces (1974)

Performer: Average White Band                           Writers: Hamish Stuart & Roger Ball
Highest US Chart Position: #1                                Label: Atlantic Records
Musicians: Hamish Stuart, Roger Ball, Malcolm Duncan, Alan Gorrie, Robbie McIntosh

One of the interesting things about this tune by the Scottish soul/funk outfit Average White Band is that the single was initially released in the UK in the summer of 1974 and it absolutely tanked, not even making the charts. It wasn’t until their AWB LP was released in the United States that the song began to get traction on radio stations as an album cut. Then Atlantic released “Pick Up the Pieces” as a single toward the end of the year and it took off, shooting to number one in February of 1975. Only then was the single re-released in England and, in the wake of the U.S. success, it managed to climb all the way to number six in the UK charts. This is one of the classic instrumentals of the seventies, along with tunes like “The Horse” by Cliff Nobles or Chicago’s “Mongonucleosis.” But while those tunes eventually fell into relative obscurity, AWB’s horn-driven masterpiece has been high school pep band and jazz band fodder even to the present day. The B-side of the single is the Isley Brothers tune “Work to Do,” an Alan Gorrie vocal, with Hamish Stuart backing, that could very easily have been an A-side of its own.

The tune begins with the rhythm guitar of Hamish Stuart and Alan Gorrie’s bass heavy on the downbeat, with Stuart continuing on upbeats at the end of the measures while the bass holds the whole note. Robbie McIntosh sizzles the tambourine while Roger Ball holds on the organ until the very end of the intro when the Leslie speaker kicks in and quivers right into the verse. From that dense beginning the verse really opens up, with McIntosh’s hi-hats crisp on the upbeat of one in every measure, and the sparse base line allowing the horns to carry the tune. At the end of each horn line there are two full measures with a guitar counter-melody provided by Stuart, which goes twice as long between the verses. The horn line alters the third time around and after the fourth time the chorus returns to the dense background of the intro with sustained chord on the organ and the drums doubling up on the beat while the horns latch onto a repetitive riff that ends with a final held note. At the end of the second chorus the horns continue to hold and that’s when we hear the distinctive background vocals shouting out the title phrase. From there the tune launches directly into the distinctive solo by tenor saxophonist Malcolm Duncan. The last chorus is double the usual length and after more vocals the verse riff snaps to a finish.

I think I played this in just about every permutation of band there was in high school except for the marching band. It was in regular rotation in the pep band at basketball games, and it was also in the book for our jazz band. During graduation festivities we even had enough seniors to put together a senior band and this is the tune we chose to play. But that was thirty years ago, and still the song lives on. A few years ago at my friend’s fiftieth birthday party, her son put together a small group from his high school band and this was also one of the songs they played. At the time it was released James Brown’s band, The J.B.s, apparently felt that Alan Gorrie’s bass line was a little too close to the one they used in “Hot Pants Road,” and so they recorded an answer song a year later called “Pick Up the Pieces One By One.” To rub their noses in the similarity even further, they released the song as being performed by A.A.B.B. for Above Average Black Band. But while the J.B.s might have been the tightest band in the business rhythmically, they don’t hold a candle to the melodic and harmonic inventiveness of Average White Band. “Pick Up the Pieces” was completely deserving of its number one status and will always be one of my favorite instrumentals of all time.