Former AWB Leader Turns Philanthropy Into ‘Childsplay’

By John Voket

Sure, everyone can sing a few lines from their favorite ‘70s song. But how many top charting ‘70s instrumental hits can you identify from just a few snippets of melody?

Probably not more than a few… “Love’s Unlimited Theme,” Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells,” maybe the song from “The Rockford Files.” And unless you were living in a cave — without a radio — the Average White Band’s infectious instrumental hit “Pick Up The Pieces” is probably another one.

The strength of that number one Billboard single from February 1974, with its effective amalgamation of funky guitar and jazzy horns driven by a hip-shaking disco beat and head-bobbing arrangement, is still generating plenty of attention for its creator, Newtown resident Roger Ball.

Strictly speaking, the tune only hit the top of the charts for a couple of weeks. But “Pick Up the Pieces” remained an almost hourly staple on a wide range of radio play lists for months. Since then, it has kept its legs as a worthy contender for more than two decades, popping up regularly on broadcast and satellite radio, as well as in recent motion pictures like Starsky and Hutch, in a Budweiser commercial, even on an episode of The Simpsons.

Sitting down one recent winter’s day in his eclectic abode, which was actually developed in 1961 from the shell of a two-century-old sawmill, Mr Ball talked easily about his big hit, his experiences with Average White Band, the music business then and now, and his newest project – a cool jazz album called Childsplay.

“Thanks to that song, I’m able to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle that affords me a great deal of time to spend with my family,” Mr Ball said, seated beside a work station that incorporates an electric keyboard, two computers, various effects and mixing units and his well-worn, slightly tarnished saxophone jammed into a little nook among all the advanced electronic consoles.

The few people who bother to ask, learn that his monster instrumental hit really didn’t start helping him “pay the bills” for more than a dozen years after it topped the Billboard pop chart.

“That’s when I got connected to a really great publishing company in L.A. They work primarily with back catalogs, and only take a modest percentage. Since I started working with that company, Bug Music, the song has been used in I don’t know how many movies, commercials and TV shows,” he said.

Besides the aforementioned placements, Mr Ball’s material has also been sampled in films from Superman II, the cult hit Swingers and Next Friday to Howard Stern’s Private Parts. His material has been covered by the Saturday Night Live band and by Paul Shaeffer on Late Night with David Letterman, and has been adapted by high-profile artists including Phil Collins, Kenny G and David Sanborn.

A Wee Lad

The local artist’s story started more than half a century ago when he began developing a love for music after his parents got him a piano.

“I was seven years old and boy did I love to play that piano,” Mr Ball recalled. “I would sit there every day and play for hours. As I started getting a bit older I would work out the chords to songs by popular artists of the time like Buddy Holly.”

By age 12 he had diversified his talents, taking up the clarinet and securing his first professional gigs with a local Dixieland jazz band in his hometown of Broughty Ferry, in Scotland.

“There was a big resurgence of Dixieland at that time in the UK,” he said. “I found myself gigging all the time.”

But like many good boys, Mr Ball honored his parents’ request to develop a more practical career he could rely on besides music, so at 18 he was off to Dundee College of Art, where he trained as an architect.

It was during his college days, however, that Mr Ball first took up the saxophone and started jamming with a number of college bands and a few lads including Molly Duncan and Alan Gorrie, who would later reunite to form the core unit of AWB.

After his graduation, Mr Ball said he applied himself for about two years working 9 to 5 in a professional office. While some pretty good designs were drafted on his mechanical drawing table, it was music that kept coursing through his veins.

“After a couple of years I headed to London, ‘cause that’s where everybody went if you wanted to work in the music business,” he said. Mr Ball began finding regular work, and was making a decent living sitting in on sessions with the likes of Badfinger, Cass Elliot and Aretha Franklin.

He was also doing a lot of arranging of music for artists and commercial applications, and jamming with a bunch of old Dundee pals when they decided to formally unite in 1971, calling themselves Average White Band. By 1974 they already had an album or two to their credit. But it was early that year when AWB quickly became a worldwide sensation with “Pick Up the Pieces,” exploding off the group’s self-titled LP.

“It was pretty amazing,” Mr Ball said. “I mean, we only had a few songs on the radio, but if you were an AWB fan, you were really committed.”

In the ensuing years, the band’s unique line-up and broadly accessible material earned AWB many opportunities to headline shows around the world, and early on, earned AWB a set warming up for Eric Clapton at his now famous Rainbow concert in London.

Moving On

Mr Ball took a short hiatus from the band to settle down a bit in the mid 1980s, and was drawn back to do a few more tours and record with AWB in the early ‘90s. He parted “fairly amicably,” with the two other original members of the band still touring, and went on to cut his first solo project, Street Struttin’, in 1996.

“I just lost my appetite for being on the road. And at that point, as a musician, I really wanted to get away from the formula AWB was using. So I went into the studio with a plan to basically go where my nose led me,” he said. “The result was really more of a showcase of everything I could do as a player and arranger. Incorporating some different genres like funk, jazz, Motown, fusion, you name it.”

Unfortunately, as he puts it, “it was a perfect formula for not selling albums.” It took a little more than eight years for the urge to hit him again, but with a new wife, the artist Donna Kearn Ball, and young son, Miles, hanging around the Newtown house, Mr Ball said he was finally ready to settle down to begin a new project.

That effort, Childsplay, was a much more concentrated effort.

“I specifically took a long time to produce it,” Mr Ball said. “And I stuck to a formula of doing what I do best.”

While Childsplay showcases a variety of flavors, all the tracks are grounded in a light jazz vein, with the title track (also the sanctioned single), “sounding like it’s got a Steely Dan groove going, of course without the vocals,” he said.

The album gave Mr Ball an opportunity to work with a few old friends, including the jazz greats Randy Brecker and Ken Gioffre to name just a couple. Both put in appearances on his Childsplay CD.

Thanks to the regular royalties from his AWB efforts and a few intermittent consulting projects that have brought him full circle back to doing a bit of architect work, Mr Ball is able to devote all of the proceeds from his new album to several of his favorite charities including Save the Children.

“Helping needy children has to be the number one priority,” he said.

Other charitable recipients of Childsplay include Doctors without Borders.

“I have enormous respect for doctors who forgo lucrative careers to help those in need, and no respect at all for doctors like plastic surgeons who perform cosmetic surgery on vain rich people — mutilation and often risky surgery for no good reason,” he said.

Another recipient organization is very near and dear to Mr Ball’s heart: the Autism Research Institute.

“I have a 22-year-old daughter who is profoundly autistic,” he said.

Now that he has released Childsplay, Mr Ball said he is feeling the inclination to perhaps drag himself out of his studio and get in front of an audiences again.

“I’m getting the bug,” he said. “Now I’m going to have to go out and find a few good jam sessions.”

With his wealth of talent, and the notoriety that comes with his many years in AWB, it won’t be any problem at all for Roger Ball to pick up the pieces and cast off on a new musical adventure with a few new lads jamming away by his side.