ABDUL Duke Fakir, the last surviving original member of the beloved Motown group the Four Tops, has died at 88.
Fakir died today of heart failure with his wife and other loved ones by his side, said a family spokesperson.
The Four Tops were among Motown’s most popular and enduring acts, and peaked in the 1960s, said the Associated Press.
Fakir was married twice and he had seven children.
His marriage to Piper Gibson lasted 50 years.
In the mid-1960s, he was briefly engaged to style icon Mary Wilson of the Supremes.
Fakir started the Four Tops with singer, the late Levi Stubbs, after meeting as high school students at a party on Detroit’s north side in 1954.
Fakir, Stubbs, Renaldo “Obie” Benson and Lawrence Payton harmonized some songs, and practiced the very next day.
Within a couple of years they had been performing as opening acts or as backup singers with artists such as Della Reese, Brook Benton, Billy Eckstine, Count Basie, Betty Carter, Redd Foxx, Richard Pryor and Flip Wilson.
“We have been able to cross some barriers – including color and age,” Fakir told the Las Vegas Sun in 2004.
Between 1964 and 1967, The Four Tops had 11 top 20 hits and two No. 1’s.
These were I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch) and the operatic classic Reach Out I’ll Be There.
We have been able to cross some barriers – including color and age.
Abdul Duke Fakir
Songs including Baby I Need Your Loving, Standing in the Shadows of Love, Bernadette and Just Ask the Lonely are renowned for alluding to romantic pain and bereavement.
They had initially called themselves the Four Aims when they started out.
But the musicians soon renamed themselves the Four Tops to avoid confusion with the white harmony quartet the Ames Brothers.
MOTOWN
Motown’s greatest stars, from the Supremes to Stevie Wonder, came of age at the Detroit-based company founded by legendary Berry Gordy in the late 1950s.
But Fakir, Stubbs, Benson and Payton had been together for about a decade when Gordy signed them up in 1963.
They already had a polished stage act and versatile vocal style that enabled them to perform anything from country songs to pop standards like Paper Doll.
They continued to make hits into the 1980s, said The New York Times.
The Four Tops were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.
The musicians also have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
“The only thing that can outlast the Four Tops’ lineup is their incredible body of work,” said the Rock Hall.
“United by their friendship and a love of music, the Four Tops stuck together for forty years.
“Mix their classy, polished vocals with the brilliant songwriting of Holland-Dozier-Holland at Motown Records and you have an unstoppable hit machine.”
When the Holland-Dozier-Holland team left Motown in 1967, the Four Tops had hits with such remakes as Walk Away Renee and MacArthur Park, said the Times.
Mix their classy, polished vocals with the brilliant songwriting of Holland-Dozier-Holland at Motown Records and you have an unstoppable hit machine.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
They shifted to the ABC-Dunhill label in 1972, returning to the Top 10 with Keeper of the Castle and Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I’ve Got).
In the early 1970s, Benson saw the San Francisco police attacking a crowd of hippies, reported The Guardian.
Benson was so angry that, in collaboration with Motown arranger Al Cleveland, he wrote the lyrics for What’s Goin’ On?
According to Benson, he gave Marvin Gaye a songwriter credit and a share of the royalties to convince the star to record the classic song.
Benson died of lung cancer aged 68 in 2005.
When Stubbs died in 2008, Four Tops leader Fakir hailed him as “one of the best singers in the world, period, of all time.”
Stubbs was the godfather of Fakir’s oldest child, said Reuters.
Payton died from liver cancer, aged 59, in 1997.
