Put It Where You Want It
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Album Summary
Average White Band, the soulful Scottish funk outfit, laid down 'Put It Where You Want It' in 1973 on MCA Records, and honey, this was a band still finding their footing but already cooking with serious heat. Recorded during the group's formative years before the world fully caught on to what they were doing, the album captured core members Hamish Stuart, Alan Gorrie, Onnie McIntyre, and the rest of the crew pouring everything they had into a raw, live-band sound that was drenched in American funk and soul. The production had that beautiful unpolished urgency that only comes from a band that's been out on the road night after night, tightening up their rhythmic interplay and letting those horn arrangements breathe and snap the way God intended funk music to breathe and snap.
Reception
- Upon its initial release, the album moved quietly through funk and soul circles without making a significant dent in the mainstream charts, the kind of record that found its people slowly and surely rather than all at once.
- Critics who paid attention recognized something special in the band's musicianship and their remarkably authentic command of funk and soul idioms — a command that raised more than a few eyebrows once listeners realized these cats were coming out of Scotland, not Memphis or Detroit.
- The album helped cultivate a devoted cult following on both sides of the Atlantic, planting seeds of credibility that would bloom fully when the band's commercial breakthrough finally arrived.
Significance
- This record stands as one of the earliest documented proof-of-concept moments for Average White Band's vision — a Scottish group not imitating Black American funk but genuinely inhabiting it with soul, discipline, and reverence.
- The title track 'Put It Where You Want It' became a touchstone for rare groove enthusiasts and crate-digging DJs, earning a long afterlife in clubs and collections that stretched well beyond its modest original release.
- The album represents a remarkable cultural bridge, demonstrating how profoundly the traditions of Black American music had traveled and taken root in musicians far removed geographically from their origins, helping to seed the globalization of funk as a living, breathing genre.
Samples
- "Put It Where You Want It" — one of the most celebrated tracks from this album among rare groove and hip-hop communities, sampled across multiple productions for its infectious rhythmic groove and has enjoyed a rich afterlife in sample-based music.
Tracklist
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A1 How Can You Go Home 107
3:08
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A2 This World Has Music 112
5:53
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A3 Twilight Zone 118
5:25
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A4 Put It Where You Want It 124
5:09
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B1 Show Your Hand 107
4:26
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B2 Back In '67 107
4:08
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B3 Reach Out 104
4:02
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B4 T.L.C. 103
8:09
Artist Details
Average White Band is a Scottish funk and soul group that formed in Dundee and Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1972, though they quickly relocated to the United States where they found their greatest success. The band, whose self-deprecating name humorously acknowledged their status as white musicians playing Black American-influenced music, developed a tight, rhythmically sophisticated sound rooted in funk, R&B, and jazz fusion. They achieved massive commercial success with their 1974 instrumental hit Pick Up the Pieces, which reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and became one of the defining funk tracks of the decade. Their ability to authentically master a genre largely pioneered by African American artists earned them widespread respect from both critics and peers, including legends like Herbie Hancock and Chaka Khan, who collaborated with them. Average White Band holds a significant place in music history as one of the few non-American acts to be embraced by the Black music community, and their catalog continues to be widely sampled by hip-hop producers and featured in film and television soundtracks.
