NEW YORK.- He musician Abdul “Duke” Fakir, the last member original survivor of the group Motown’s The Four Tops, known for hits like Reach Out, I’ll Be There y Standing in the Shadows of Lovedied at the age of 88.
Fakir died Monday of heart failure at his home in Detroit surrounded by his wife and other loved ones, according to a family spokesman. Motown founder Berry Gordy said in a statement that Fakir helped embody the showmanship, class and artistry of the Tops.
“Duke was the first tenor: smooth, suave and always fine,” Gordy said. “For 70 years, he kept the Four Tops’ remarkable legacy intact.”
The Four Tops were one of Motown’s most popular and enduring acts, peaking in the 1960s. Between 1964 and 1967, they had 11 Top 20 hits and two No. 1s: “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)” and the operatic classic “Reach Out I’ll Be There.” Other songs, often sagas of romantic pain and mourning, include “Baby I Need Your Loving,” “Standing in the Shadows of Love,” “Bernadette” and “Just Ask the Lonely.”
The musician’s career in The Four Tops
Many of Motown’s biggest stars, from The Supremes to Stevie Wonder, came of age at the Detroit-based company founded by Gordy in the late 1950s. But Fakir, singer Levi Stubbs, Renaldo “Obie” Benson and Lawrence Payton had been together for a decade when Gordy hired them in 1963 (after the group had turned him down a few years earlier) and already had a polished stage act and a versatile vocal style that allowed them to perform anything from country songs to pop standards like Paper Doll.
They were called the Four Aims when they started, but soon renamed themselves the Four Tops to avoid confusion with the white harmony quartet The Ames Brothers.
After Holland-Dozier-Holland left Motown in 1967, the Tops enjoyed more sporadic success, with hits in the following years including Still Water (Love)and a pair of top 10 songs in the early 1970s for ABC/Dunhill Records, Keeper of the Castle y Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I’ve Got)They last reached the top 20 in the early 1980s, with the sentimental ballad When She Was My Girl.
While the Temptations and other bandmates suffered from drug problems and personnel changes, the Four Tops remained together and intact until Payton died in 1997. (Benson died in 2005 and Stubbs in 2008.)
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AP/Ron Frehm/file
Fakir: “A little bit of me went with them”
Fakir later toured as the Four Tops with vocalist Alexander Morris, Ronnie McNeir and Lawrence “Roquel” Payton Jr., Lawrence Payton’s son.
“As each of them (the original members) passed away, a little bit of me went with them,” Fakir told UK Music Reviews in 2021. “When Levi left us, I found myself in a dilemma about what I was going to do from that point on, but after a while I realized that the name, along with the legacy that had been left to us, simply had to continue, and judging by the public reaction, it soon became quite apparent that I did the right thing and I really feel good about that.”
In addition to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, their honors included being inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998 and receiving a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009. Most recently, Fakir had been working on a Broadway musical based on their lives and completed the memoir I’ll Be Therepublished in 2022.
“What I like most about them is that they are very professional, they have fun with what they do, they are very affectionate, they have always been gentlemen,” Wonder said of the group when he helped induct them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.
Fakir was married twice, his second marriage, to Piper Gibson, lasting 50 years. He had seven children of whom six survive. In the mid-1960s, he was briefly engaged to Mary Wilson of The Supremes.
Origin of the artist
A lifelong Detroit resident, Fakir was of Ethiopian and Bangladeshi descent and grew up in a tough neighborhood where rival African-American and white gangs often fought. He had early dreams of being a professional athlete, but he was also a talented singer, whose tenor caught his attention as a performer in his church choir. He was a teenager when he befriended Stubbs, and the two first sang with Benson and Payton at a birthday party hosted by a local group of girls, whom Fakir remembered as upper-class, very fine young women.
“Singing was the byproduct of us going to the party to find the girls!” Fakir said in a 2016 interview with writewyattuk.com.
“We told Levi to pick a song and sing the lead vocal. We would just back him up. Well, when he started, we all did it like we had been rehearsing the song for months. Our mix was amazing. We were looking at each other while we were singing, and right after we were like, ‘man, this is a group, this is a group. ’”
Source: AP