Anything but Average: Why AWB were a simply great Scottish band

The Herald Scotland

16-05-2025

Scoppa went on to say that the group went beyond merely sounding like a soul band. It was a soul band. "There's no question about that, although there's the obvious question about how in the world the sextet got to this level of proficiency and emotional involvement in a culturally alien idiom".
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The band attracted lots of critical praise for their exemplary musicianship and songwriting skills – the same qualities that appealed to the Atlantic Records label, one of the biggest and most influential labels ever. Atlantic released the AWB album and saw it be certified gold and top both the pop and the R&B charts in the States. Its single, Pick Up the Pieces, did the same.
Some critics alighted upon the 'Average' in the band's name. "Average White Band is rubbish!!!", exclaimed one writer on the UK magazine, Beat Instrumental, in 1973. "They should be called Extraordinary White Band. Why? Simply because these six, white, dedicated musicians have something unique – the ability to play black soul music that not only sounds right, dammit, but FEELS right, too!"
Then there was this, from a Rolling Stone writer in December 1974: "Their name has a nice sense of irony and confidence, because the Average White Band plays music that is anything but white; despite their pale faces and soft Scottish accents, they play, sing and write as if to the ghetto born.
"Make no mistake", added Judith Sims. "This band isn't 'good for a white soul band' - they're just plain good, with high-intensity rhythm, strong, ungimmicked vocals, and a wealth of original material that ranks with the best R&B songs".
Marvin Gaye, James Brown and Ben E King were all said to have admired the band. And, famously, when they became one of the first white groups to appear on the venerable US music show, Soul Train, the host Don Cornelius told the audience: 'It's something that has to be seen to be believed. They play and sing like they were raised on cornbread and black-eyed peas.'
One of the very first Scottish bands to make it big in the States, the Average Whites deserved all the critical and commercial success that came their way. It was not doffocukt to see why they had such a successful crossover into the US music market. As the Scottish music historian Brian Hogg has put it, the AWB album continued the group's "intuitive and rhythmic understanding of black music, but infused with a great sense of discipline [than on their debut album, Show Your Hand]".
Pick Up the Pieces, that great instrumental, was their calling card. On YouTube there's a video, shot in 1977 at the Montreaux International Festival. It's all there: that great opening sax riff, the driving drumbeat and rhythm guitar chords, that energetic funk groove.
The band were much, much more than one song, however. Others come to mind: Let's Go Round Again, Person to Person, Cut the Cake, You Got It, Nothing You Can Do, and a brilliant cover of the Isley Brothers' Work to Do. Plus, they were great live - even until the very end, when the original line-up from the glorious days of the Seventies had been whittled down to just the remaining original founding members, Alan Gorrie and Onnie McIntyre.
Anthony Baxter's new documentary should be worth watching.