SAN DIEGO >> It isn’t uncommon for musicians whose careers have passed the 50 year-mark to hope their legacies will live on 50 years after they have gone. Average White Band bassist and singer Alan Gorrie is most assuredly not one of them.

Never mind that the acclaimed soul and R&B group he co-founded in 1972 in his native Scotland scored an international chart-topping hit with 1975’s “Pick Up the Pieces.” It remains one of the bestselling instrumentals ever released, or that the group went on to collaborate with such legendary singers as Marvin Gaye, Ben E. King and Luther Vandross.

Never mind that songs by AWB, as Average White Band is also referred to by fans, have been prominently sampled by such major hip-hop acts as Public Enemy NAS, A Tribe Called Quest, Beastie Boys and Eric B. & Rakim — or that AWB’s slinky 1975 gem, “School Boy Crush,” has been sampled nearly 170 times alone.

Never mind that Questlove, the Oscar-winning band leader of the Roots and the music director for TV’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” has cited AWB’s 1976 live album, “Person to Person,” as his all-time favorite by any artist and expressed his desire to produce a new AWB album.

“‘Person to Person’ “single-handedly changed my life,” Questlove told interviewer Jamison Harvey in 2014. “This is the record that I applied the 10,000 hours of practice to.”

And never mind that next year will see the release of “Average White Band: Soul to Soul,” a film documentary by award-winning director Anthony Baxter. It will include footage from the brassy group’s farewell tour, which concludes next month.

“Fifty years from now I don’t think anyone will be talking about AWB. I can’t see why it would go into another cycle of remembrance or importance,” Gorrie said.

“I think it’s possible,” he allowed. “But I can’t imagine it would be something that would appeal any more than Dixieland jazz appeals to young people today. It gets to the stage where it’s so far removed from whatever music will be generated 50 years from now it that it wouldn’t have any relevance.”

That said, Gorrie is proud of his band’s achievements and longevity. He happily discussed AWB’s legacy for more than an hour last week from his longtime home in Connecticut. Here are edited excerpts from that conversation.

Q: Scotland is a small country that has produced some very soulful artists with a great affinity for Black American music, including AWB, Frankie Miller, Maggie Bell…

A: And more!

Q: Why do you think musicians in your homeland connected so strongly with American soul music in the 1960s?

A: I think it’s got something to do with the nature of us Scottish people growing up and feeling a sense of being second-class citizens in the makeup of Great Britain, where the English dominated everything. And musically, the English didn’t inspire us a whole lot. Whereas Black American music seemed to strike a very passionate chord with all of us growing up. Scottish people have different throats and voices than English singers. We gravitated to singing like Black guys and it’s natural, not affected. The English have another shape to their voices, which leads to singers like Bryan Ferry, Howard Jones and (Spandau Ballet’s) Tony Hadley. They are good singers, but don’t sound anything like the Black soul musicians that we always hoped to be.

Q: I imagine that James Jamerson, the house band bassist for Motown Records, was a big inspiration for you.

A: James Jamerson was my god! He was absolutely one of my idols as a bassist; him and Stax Records (house bassist) Duck Dunn. Those were the two guys that really drove me to play bass the way I do. And then came Bootsy Collins, who was playing with James Brown when we saw James perform in London (in 1971).

Q: Average White Band was formed in 1972 by six Scottish guys who were undeniably white, but far from average. The group’s moniker suggests you had a good sense of humor.

A: You mean the tongue-in-cheekiness of the name? (chuckles) The truth is weren’t anything like your average white British band which, at the time, would be playing rock ‘n’ roll or some version thereof. We were a soul band playing, for all intents and purposes, Black music. So, there was some irony in the band’s name. But we had these phrases — “It’s too hot for the average white man!” and “It’s too wet for the average white man!” — meaning the average Joe. It was just a phrase we were tossing around, and we made it the Average White Band. People liked us and the name right away in London. But we knew we had to get to the U.S. if we wanted to be the real thing.