"Pickin' Up the Pieces" is the first song ever recorded by pioneer country rock

Country rock

Country rock is sub-genre of popular music, formed from the fusion of rock with country. The term is generally used to refer to the wave of rock musicians who began to record country-flavored records in the late 1960s and early 1970s, beginning with Bob Dylan and The Byrds; reaching its greatest...

 band Poco

Poco

Poco is an Southern California country rock band originally formed by Richie Furay and Jim Messina following the demise of Buffalo Springfield in 1968. The title of their first album, Pickin' Up the Pieces, is a reference to the break-up of Buffalo Springfield. Highly influential and creative,...

. Written by founding member Richie Furay

Richie Furay

Richie Furay is an American singer, songwriter, and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame member who is best known for forming the bands Buffalo Springfield with Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Bruce Palmer, and Dewey Martin, and Poco with Jim Messina, Rusty Young, George Grantham and Randy Meisner...

, the song was the title track of Poco's first album

Pickin' Up the Pieces

Pickin' Up the Pieces is the debut album by Country rock pioneers Poco, released in 1969. It was one of the earliest examples of the emerging genre of Country rock. Several of the songs here date back to Richie Furay's days in Buffalo Springfield...

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History

After Buffalo Springfield

Buffalo Springfield

Buffalo Springfield is a North American folk rock band renown both for its music and as a springboard for the careers of Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Richie Furay and Jim Messina. Among the first wave of North American bands to become popular in the wake of the British invasion, the group combined...

 broke up, members Richie Furay and Jim Messina decided to make a band with pedal steel guitar

Pedal steel guitar

The pedal steel guitar is a type of electric guitar that uses a metal bar to "fret" or shorten the length of the strings, rather than fingers on strings as with a conventional guitar. Unlike other types of steel guitar, it also uses pedals and knee levers to affect the pitch, hence the name "pedal"...

 player Rusty Young, with whom they had recorded the Furay-penned Springfield song "Kind Woman". This was Furay's first Poco-intended song. According to Young, "Richie played 'Pickin' Up The Pieces' for us back in 1967. ... It was obviously a comment on leaving one thing behind and carrying on," referring to the breakup of Buffalo Springfield and the new beginnings with Poco.

Attitude and Impact

The single, though not commercially successful, was nonetheless undoubtedly instrumental in the creation of the then new genre country rock. Richie Furay said of "Pickin' Up the Pieces": "To me it summarized the attitude we wanted to convey in our music: good, wholesome & positive. There was so much negativity going on in the world in the early 70s and it needed a refreshing sound. The country rock sound we were creating, would be it. We were innovators, pioneering the way for a whole new 'Southern California sound' that many groups who followed would capitalize on."