"Pick Up the Pieces" is a 1974 song by the

Average White Band The Average White Band (also known as AWB) are a Scottish funk and R&B band that had a series of soul and disco hits between 1974 and 1980. They are best known for their million-selling instrumental track " Pick Up the Pieces", and their album ...

from their second album, '' AWB''. On the single, songwriting credit was given to founding member and saxophonist Roger Ball and guitarist

Hamish Stuart James Hamish Stuart (born 8 October 1949) is a British guitarist, bassist, singer, composer and record producer. He was an original member of the Average White Band. Biography Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Stuart attended Queens Park School in ...

individually and the entire band collectively. It is essentially an

instrumental An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to inst ...

, apart from the song's title being shouted at several points in the song.

Background

The guitar line of the song came from Hamish Stuart, while Roger Ball wrote the first part of the horn melody. The song was produced by

Arif Mardin Arif Mardin (March 15, 1932 – June 25, 2006) was a Turkish-American music producer, who worked with hundreds of artists across many different styles of music, including jazz, rock, soul, disco and country. He worked at Atlantic Records for o ...

. According to Malcolm 'Molly' Duncan, he had disagreed with releasing the song as a single because the song is a "funk instrumental played by Scotsmen with no lyrics other than a shout". He also said about the shouts of "Pick up the pieces": "It's about picking yourself up when things aren't going well. We'd spent a lot of time making no money whatsoever, so it felt very relevant." The song is an extended long version on the live ''Person To Person'' album (1976) (18:06) and on the various artists album ''The Atlantic Family Live at Montreux'' (1977) (21:40). The

tenor saxophone The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor and the alto are the two most commonly used saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B (while ...

solo on the Montreux version is by noted jazz instrumentalist

Michael Brecker Michael Leonard Brecker (March 29, 1949 – January 13, 2007) was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. He was awarded 15 Grammy Awards as both performer and composer. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Berklee College of M ...

. The solo on the original release is by Molly Duncan. The song is in the key of

F minor F minor is a minor scale based on F, consisting of the pitches F, G, A, B, C, D, and E. Its key signature consists of four flats. Its relative major is A-flat major and its parallel major is F major. Its enharmonic equivalent, E-sharp mi ...

Chart performance

"Pick Up the Pieces" was released in the United Kingdom in July 1974 but failed to chart. When the album was released in the United States in October 1974, radio stations there started to play the song, and on 22 February 1975, it went to the top of the US singles chart and peaked at number five on the soul charts. ''Billboard'' ranked it as the No. 20 song for 1975. In Canada, it reached number 4 on the weekly charts, and number 44 on the year-end chart. After its North American success, the song charted in the UK and climbed to number six. "Pick Up the Pieces" also made it to number eleven on the US disco chart.

References

External links

Entry at discogs.com
{{Average White Band 1974 singles 1970s instrumentals Funk songs Disco songs Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles Cashbox number-one singles Song recordings produced by Arif Mardin Atlantic Records singles 1974 songs Songs written by Hamish Stuart Average White Band songs