IT’S not a crowded field, admittedly, but of the handful of songs of Scottish provenance to reach the top of the US singles charts, few are less likely than Pick Up The Pieces by the Average White Band. A deliriously funky instrumental concocted by a motley crew of Glaswegians, Dundonians and Perthites, the single hit the heights in February 1975, turning the sextet into the unlikely darlings du jour of American R&B music.

“Who knew?” grins Hamish Stuart, the song’s co-writer and AWB guitarist between 1973 and their initial dissolution a decade later. “If someone had said 45 years ago that the song would still be around and have such a rich life, we would have laughed. We knew we were onto something, but we had no idea what.”

Pick Up The Pieces started out as an improvised groove, jammed one afternoon at the house the band were sharing in North Hollywood. “We’d get up and play every day, creating the songs for the second album,” says Stuart. “We came up with that groove one day and [saxophonist] Roger Ball took a cassette away with him and came back the next day with the melody, then we slowly developed the song.”

Released as a single in July 1974, Pick Up The Pieces was a slow burn, entering the US charts before Christmas and taking a further two months to climb to the top. In tandem with their number one album AWB – often referred to simply as the ‘white album’ for its distinctive cover – the song made superstars out of the group, but their talents ran deep, as a new three-disc compilation attests. Released next week, Gold covers the highlights of a career which brought further commercial success with hits such as Cut The Cake, Queen Of My Soul and Let’s Go Round Again.

The Average White Band formed in London in 1972, a gang of ex-pat funkateers led by vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Alan Gorrie. Stuart jumped on board in 1973, in time to help record their debut album, Show Your Hand.

“The first year was difficult,” he recalls. “The change was so radical, because we all came from different backgrounds. I came from a pop/soul thing. ‘Molly’ and Roger, the two horn players, were much more jazz orientated. Getting into everybody’s style of music, which ultimately fused, took us the first year. After that, it fell into place. The learning curve was very quick. We progressed rapidly from the first rehearsals, to the first album, and onto the next one. The songwriting went up a notch. We got inspiration from the people we connected with, and gained momentum. It took on a life of its own.”

One significant turning point was the patronage of Bruce McCaskill, tour manager with Eric Clapton, who fell for the band when they supported Clapton in 1973. McCaskill took them under his wing, using his Stateside contacts to land a deal with Atlantic Records, the legendary soul label led by producer/moguls Jerry Wexler and Arif Mardin.

“The timing was dead right for us, we were so lucky in so many ways, connecting with Jerry Wexler and Atlantic when we did,” says Stuart. “Wexler jumped on it immediately. He listened to us once, and three weeks later we were in Criteria Studios in Miami, where he, Arif and producer Tommy Dowd were recording Aretha Franklin. We were in the land of make believe! All of a sudden, we were surrounded by our heroes. There were some amazing moments. It was lovely to be at the Grammys the first time. We opened for Gladys Knight at the Spectrum in Philadelphia, just as things were beginning to take off, and it was an entirely black audience. We had such a ball. We went down well, and it validated what we were doing.”

In the days before mass market media saturation, many people in the industry simply assumed the band were black. “That was actually part of Wexler’s marketing strategy,” says Stuart. “All the copies that went to black radio had no photographs. We would turn up and they would say, ‘Wow, you really are a white band? And you’re not American, you’re from Scotland? What!?’ But we were accepted so much by the black community. There was no negativity at all, it was so positive, and an extraordinary experience for all of us.”

It was not all sweetness and light though. Drummer Robbie McIntosh died at a Hollywood party in September 1974 after overdosing on heroin, believing he was taking cocaine. Gorrie also overdosed, but thankfully survived. Personally and professionally, it was a hammer blow for the band.

“We agreed early on that we were going to continue, otherwise it would all have been pointless,” says Stuart. “We had to carry on, but it was very difficult. Robbie was a very, very strong personality who brought an incredible amount to the band.”

They eventually found an able replacement in Steve Ferrone, and set about writing and recording their third album, Cut The Cake. “That was a very difficult record to make,” says Stuart. “I think Atlantic were wise getting us into the studio as quickly as possible, because it might have fallen apart. For all our good intentions of carrying on, it could have disintegrated. We were living in a house in Long Island. We were all still in the middle of grieving as we were writing the new songs, and also when Pick Up The Pieces and the second album went to number one. It was a crazy, crazy time, being pulled one way emotionally and then the other. We were on top of the world with the record, but still mourning Robbie. The fact that we were able to carry on and make music pulled us through. The music was good for everybody.”

Released in the summer of 1975, Cut The Cake was another huge success, but as the decade wore on AWB’s star began to wane. A critical backlash against disco meant that their brand of dance music was increasingly perceived as unfashionable, and by the end of the decade they had been dropped by Atlantic. “We realised that things had slipped a bit, in terms of our currency, and music was changing so much,” says Stuart. “It was a strange time. After the Shine album it started to slide, creatively. We were all heading in different directions.”

When the band decided to call it a day in 1983, “it felt like a relief,” says Stuart. “We tried to make it work but we hadn’t moved with the times enough, and it all just slipped away from us.”

Stuart continued to work steadily. He contributed to records by Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan and David Sanborn, and spent six years as a member of Paul McCartney’s band. “That was a real high point,” he says. “Vocally, it was very easy. He’s a great singer, and the first time we sang together it just blended really well. We did a lot of backing vocals for the Flowers In The Dirt album. Elvis Costello and Paul had written half the songs for that record, and the idea was to record them with Elvis and Paul producing, but they had pretty different ideas of how it should go, and eventually Paul just took over. The songs really worked, but as a production team it didn’t. It’s a beautifully crafted record, though. Paul knows a thing or two about making records, you know!”

Born in Glasgow, Stuart lives in Faversham in Kent these days. He turns 70 in October, but shows little inclination to slow down. As well as recently producing and playing with Scottish funk band James Brown Is Annie, he’s a regular member of Ringo Starr’s All Starr Band, and has “about three album’s worth of material” waiting to be recorded. He also performs with the 360 band, which includes former AWB members Malcolm ‘Molly’ Duncan and Steve Ferrone.

Meanwhile, the Average White Band reformed in an altered line-up in 1989, and continue to tour and record in a formation featuring Gorrie and Owen McIntrye from the original band. “I heard something a few months ago from their last album, and I couldn’t hear anything that said AWB to me,” says Stuart. “I couldn’t hear Alan. His voice is very strongly identifiable, so it was kind of disappointing. Once that identity goes, I don’t know what’s left. But whatever they want to do is fine by me. I don’t have any problems with it.”

Is there a chance of uniting the two camps and bringing the original Average White Band back for a final fling? “It would be nice,” says Stuart. “Everybody else has agreed to do it, myself and Roger and Steve and Molly, but I don’t think Alan wants it to happen. So much water has passed under the bridge at this point, it would be nice to do something, but I don’t see it happening. I’m having a ball with 360. We had blast making our record, and we have started cooking up some things for another one.”

No matter where Stuart appears, Pick Up The Pieces is never far behind. “Sometimes you go to bed and you feel like you’re still playing it,” he laughs. “But it’s always enjoyable. I’ve just been out with Ringo, we’ve been playing it and it’s great. I never tire of it. There’s always something new you can find in it; it still has life. That goes for most of what AWB did. I mainly look back with pride at what we created together.” He chuckles. “I don’t know about gold, but it’s decent.”

Gold (Demon) is out on Friday