Abdul ‘Duke’ Fakir, last of the Four Tops, dies aged 88

NEW YORK – Abdul “Duke” Fakir, the last surviving member of Motown’s beloved Four Tops, known for hits like “Reach Out, I’ll Be There” and “Standing in the Shadows of Love,” died at the age of 88.

Fakir died Monday of heart failure at his home in Detroit, according to a family spokesman, along with his wife and other loved ones. Motown founder Berry Gordy said in a statement that Fakir helped embody the Tops’ “attitude, style and artistry.”

“Duke was the original tenor — smooth, smooth, and always sharp,” Gordy said. “For 70 years, he kept the amazing legacy of the Four Tops 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. 1: “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)” and the operatic “Reach Out I’ll Be There.” Other songs, often about the pain of love and loss, included “Baby I Need Your Loving,” “Standing in the Shadow of Love,” “Bernadette” and “Just Ask the Lonely.”

Many of Motown’s biggest stars, from the Supremes to Stevie Wonder, have performed at the Detroit-based company started by Gordy in the late 1950s. But Fakir, lead singer Levi Stubbs, Renaldo “Obie” Benson and Lawrence Payton had been together for a decade when Gordy signed them in 1963 (after the band turned him down a few years earlier) and they were they already have an improved stage act. and a flexible vocal style that enabled them to sing from country to classic songs like “Paper Doll.”

They called themselves the Four Minds when they started, but soon called themselves the Four Peaks to avoid confusion with the white harmony of the Ames Brothers quartet.

The Tops had recorded for several labels, including the famous Chess Records in Chicago, with little commercial success. But Gordy and A&R man Mickey Stevenson put them together with the songwriting team of Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier and Brian Holland and they quickly caught on, putting together a tough, haunting sound behind a baritone Stubbs’ fast, sometimes desperate.

After Holland-Dozier-Holland left Motown in 1967, the Tops enjoyed short-lived success, with hits over the next few years including “Still Water (Love),” and top 10 hits in the early 1970s. for ABC/Dunhill Records. , “Keeper of the Castle” and “Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I’m With).” They last reached the top 20 in the early 1980s, with the emotional hit “When She Was My Girl”.

All the while, they kept busy in concert and sometimes even matched up with members of the latter-day Temptations, a friendly rivalry that began when the groups performed together on a television star-studded concert. 1983 which celebrated Motown’s 25th anniversary. Although Meleko and other peers had drug problems, discord and personnel changes, the Four Tops remained together and strong until Payton’s death in 1997. (Benson died 2005 and Stubbs in 2008).

“The things I like about them the most – they’re professional, they enjoy what they do, they’re very loving, they’ve always been gentlemen,” Wonder said of them when he inducted them into the Rock and Roll Hall. of Fame in 1990.

Fakir later toured as the Four Tops with lead singer Alexander Morris, Ronnie McNeir and Lawrence ‘Roquel’ Payton Jr., son of Lawrence Payton.

“When each of them (the original members) passed a little bit I was left with them,” Fakir told UK Music Reviews in 2021. “When Levi left us, I found myself in a crisis of what I was going to do from that moment on but after a while I realized that the name as well as the legacy they left us had to continue, and following the audience’s reaction to it became clear that I did the right thing and I feel really good about it.”

In addition to the Rock Hall of Fame, their honors included being voted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998 and receiving a Grammy lifetime achievement award in 2009. Recently, Fakir has been active in music a planned Broadway show based on their lives and completed memoir. “I’ll Be There,” published in 2022.

Fakir was married twice, 50 years ago to Piper Gibson, and had seven children. (Six survived him). In the mid-1960s, he was briefly engaged to Mary Wilson of the Supremes.

A lifelong resident of Detroit who stayed home even after Gordy moved the label to Los Angeles in the early 1970s, Fakir was of Ethiopian and Bangladeshi descent and grew up in a poor neighborhood. where rival black and white gangs often fought. He had early dreams of being a professional athlete, but he was also a talented singer whose tenor was noticed as a singer in his church choir. She was in her teens when she befriended Stubbs, and the two sang with Benson and Payton at a birthday party thrown by a local “girlfriend” group that Fakir was in. remember as “classy, ​​very beautiful ladies.”

Singing was a product of us going to a party looking for girls! Fakir said in a 2016 interview with https://writewyattuk.com.

“We told Levi to just pick a song and sing first. We would just support him. When he started, we all fell as if we had been practicing the song for months! Our meeting was very good. We were just looking at each other while we were singing, and right after we said, ‘Man, this is a band! This is a team!’ ”