STANDING IN THE SHADOWS OF DEATH
Last of the OG Four Tops, Duke Fakir, has died aged 88. Fakir had befriended frontman Levi Stubbs in high school over their mutual interest in sports and singing, and soon the quartet was rounded out with Lawrence Payton and Renaldo Benson. They named themselves The Four Aims (named as such to show they aimed to be the best) before settling on the similarly triumphant Four Tops to avoid confusion with the Ames Brothers.
It was a lofty goal of a name that they more than met. Recruited by Motown a decade into their career, the Tops boasted one of the strongest discographies out of the Detroit corridors, often supplied by the brilliance of Holland-Dozier-Holland. The mighty “Reach Out I’ll Be There” was their very best, but from the longing of “Baby I Need Your Loving” and “I Can’t Help Myself” to the intense “Standing in the Shadows of Love” and “Bernadette”, there was no drought of excellence.
They also did several covers (“Walk Away Renee” and “If I Were a Carpenter”) before their chartmaking heyday ended in the late 60s. Now without Holland-Dozier-Holland, the Tops were supplanted by other Motown giants from Smokey Robinson to Norman Whitfield, and continued to make the occasional chart imprint with hits like “Still Water (Love)” and the post-Motown “Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I’ve Got)”.
The Tops still occasionally charted in the 80s, but by that point had largely segued into an exclusively-touring act. Despite a close brush with the Lockerbie bombing (the Tops were set to board Pan Am Flight 103 before a prolonged filming of a Top of the Pops appearance forced them to take a later plane), the Tops remained tight knit with the same lineup for 44 years. Payton’s death in 1997 spelled an end to that, and with the deaths of Benson and Stubbs in the aughts, Fakir became the guard of the Tops’ legacy while continuing to tour with a new lineup.
Fakir was also close friends with Supreme Mary Wilson (including a brief romance), and released his autobiography in 2022. He continued to tour to the very end, only retiring two days before his death. Three teams reached out, including Hits Of 36 Years Ago And Hits Today keeping up his perfect hit streak. There is an extra tinge of sadness as I had bought tickets to see the Tops this winter just weeks before his death. I’ll still be hearing the same old songs, but with different meaning since he’s been gone…
And feck, I said to myself a few weeks ago I was too tired to write a lot of words even if were a Four fn Top, but I still wrote a wall of text.
Guess I can’t help myself…
Abdul “Duke” Fakir
26 December 1935 – 22 July 2024, aged 88
3 TEAMS (💀💀💀💀💀💀 6 POINTS)