The small Scottish city of Dundee is not the kind of place to have any obvious connection with funk; damp and drizzly, conservative, and overwhelmingly white, the only way Dundee might funk is if it smells bad. But anyone can have the (musical) funk, and the Scotsmen who met at college in Dundee and formed Average White Band were not held back by their origins: they made international waves in the 70s with the hit single "Pick Up The Pieces" and several big-selling albums. "Pick Up The Pieces" topped the pop charts in the USA (and ironically reached No.5 in the Black Singles chart), and remains one of the most widely recognised funk grooves today, thanks to being frequently sampled by hip-hop artists and regularly used on television. The album it featured on, AWB (1974), was acclaimed by critics and sold in the millions. Subsequent albums were moderately successful, before the band eventually split in 1982. They re-united in 1989 and have continued to record and tour sporadically since.
