50 Years Of Soul

The best of the Motown stable of performers were the four men known as the Four Tops. During the summer of 1965, I remember hearing "I Can't Help Myself" played over and over by some custodians where I also was working as a custodian. I had just earned an MA in history and the best job I could find was working a split shift as a custodian in the student union building at Eastern New Mexico University (ENMU). During my morning stint beginning at 4:00 AM, the other custodians played the jukebox (without depositing any coins) and the Four Tops singing their #1 hit filled the empty building. Whenever I hear that song, I go back in time. If this is (fair & balanced) nostalgia, so be it.

[x The New York Times]
Still Standing in the Shadows of Motown
By MICHELINE MAYNARD


Today's Four Tops: From left to right, Renaldo Benson, Theo Peoples, Ronnie McNair and Abdul Fakir at the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas. 

DETROIT, July 24 — Inside the tiny house where Motown Records began, Abdul Fakir is standing in famed Studio A, pointing out the worn spots on the floor where he and other members of the Four Tops stood when cutting their records.

He gestures to the sound booth, where the songwriters Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland sat, tweaking their arrangements. Motown's founder, Berry Gordy, stayed in his office upstairs in a house next door. But Mr. Gordy could hear the session through the walls. "If he came down, you had a hit," recalled Mr. Fakir, known as Duke.

On a day last month, a group of tourists descends the stairs. They fill the small studio, now part of the Motown Historical Museum, clamoring for autographs. Eulalio Brown of Port Huron, Mich., awaits his moment. Posing for a picture with Mr. Fakir, Mr. Brown, who claims a collection of Motown records "as big as Motown itself," is asked what set the Four Tops apart. "Longevity," he says, noting their five decades as recording artists.

Yet time has ravaged the Tops, too. Half the group no longer performs, including Levi Stubbs, whose gravelly voice was the signature of almost every song. Younger replacements have felt the sting of audiences who wanted nothing to change. Hits are scarce, too: the last was 15 years ago.

But while other groups of their era have broken up or been relegated to county fairs, the Tops still draw crowds to summer amphitheaters, where they crisply perform classics like "Standing in the Shadows of Love," as well as jazz tunes and fresh pop material.

And while the group is split on whether to continue if another original member can't go on, the Tops aren't packing up their sequined tuxedos just yet. On Wednesday, the group marks its 50th anniversary at a concert here that is being taped as their first television special.

Lifelong friends like Aretha Franklin and Mary Wilson, an original Supreme, will be on hand at the Detroit Opera House, honoring the group that was formed after its four original members, then high school students, met at a party in 1954.

Mr. Fakir, 68, will join Renaldo Benson, known as Obie, who is also 68, along with the two newest Tops, Ronnie McNair, 54, and Theo Peoples, 43. Mr. Peoples, formerly of the Temptations, will take on the parts sung by Mr. Stubbs, who stopped singing four years ago, felled by ill heath.

Now confined to a wheelchair, Mr. Stubbs, who declined to be interviewed, last appeared in public in April, at a benefit in Detroit.

The other original Top, Lawrence Payton, died in 1997. Their absence makes the anniversary bittersweet. "It's like having one body with two limbs missing," Mr. Benson said over a lobster lunch last month in a downtown Detroit restaurant.


Original members, clockwise from top left, Renaldo Benson, Abdul Fakir, Lawrence Payton and Levi Stubbs. 

Not that the new members have had it easy. Mr. Peoples, the youngest Top, watched fans walk out of concerts when they discovered that he, not Mr. Stubbs, was singing lead. Not that he blamed them. "They're loyal fans of Levi's," Mr. Peoples said. "I can't take that as an insult."

The Tops frequently team up with Mr. Peoples's former group, the Temptations, with whom they first sang on Motown's 25th-anniversary special in 1983. Audiences sometimes confuse the two groups, given that they consist of identically dressed black men (five in the case of the Temptations) who sing in harmony and perform dance routines. But numbers tell the story: over the years there have been 21 Temptations, but only 6 Tops. And for the first 43 years, simply Mr. Fakir, Mr. Benson, Mr. Stubbs and Mr. Payton.

Mr. Fakir credits the quartet's closeness to the years they spent bouncing around the jazz club circuit. Leaving Detroit for New York, they shared a studio apartment and rotated three suits among them. (The Top with the most important appointment had first pick, Mr. Fakir said.)

The Tops toured with the jazz balladeer Billy Eckstine, who admonished them to forgo fancy dance steps until they had mastered their songs, as well as Count Basie and his orchestra. In 1963 they landed on the Jack Paar "Tonight" show, singing a jazz arrangement of "In the Still of the Night."

Watching in Detroit, Mr. Gordy instructed his staff to sign them up. By then the Tops were eager to trade the club scene for a label already known for generating hits, said Suzanne E. Smith, assistant professor at George Mason University and the author of "Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit."

But it took the Hollands and Mr. Dozier another year after that to concoct the Tops' first hit single, "Baby, I Need Your Lovin'," in 1964, and another year for the Tops to land their first No. 1 hit, "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)." Their second No. 1 hit, "Reach Out, I'll Be There," followed in 1966.

"We didn't know what bag to put them in," Mr. Dozier said by telephone from his home in Las Vegas. They concluded that Mr. Stubbs's plaintive voice should be most prominent, backed by the Tops' harmonies and layered with vocals by a female group, the Andantes.

Motown's choreographers and costume designers added to the presentation — "things they wouldn't have gotten" without joining Motown, Ms. Smith said.

Snappily dressed even offstage, the Tops liked to carouse in all corners of the globe. Mr. Dozier remembers 18-hour days that stretched until 3 a.m.

But relations with Motown grew strained by the early 70's, when Mr. Gordy took the label to Los Angeles. That was around the time Mr. Benson went in a decidedly un-Tops direction by writing the lyrics for "What's Goin' On," which Marvin Gaye recorded after revamping it with Al Cleveland. Gaye embraced the protest song over initial objections of Mr. Gordy, who doubted the tune would sell, Mr. Benson said.

Mr. Benson was inspired to write it after an afternoon in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. He was stunned, he said, when police descended on a crowd of hippies, pummeling them for no apparent reason.

After leaving Motown, the Tops scored occasional hits through the 1970's and 1980's, the last being "Indestructible," which reached No. 35 on the pop charts in 1988. Mr. Stubbs meanwhile became known to a new generation as the voice of a man-eating plant in the film version of "Little Shop of Horrors."

While its Motown hits sell tickets, Mr. Fakir said the Tops were always cycling newer material through their act, saving their biggest songs, like "Reach Out" for a show-ending medley. By that point familiar lyrics like "I'll be there, to always see you through" are a game saver in the event of an off night.

"They could be sick, they could be on crutches," he explains, but once the audience hears those words, "Wham! You've got 'em."

The decline of Mr. Stubbs and Mr. Payton's death are cautionary tales to Mr. Fakir and Mr. Benson, who have talked about retiring the Tops should one of them falter.

"We're not worried about ourselves, but we want people to enjoy it," Mr. Fakir said. He went on, "When things start to diminish, it's time to go home."

That prospect alarms Mr. Peoples and Mr. McNair, who separately insisted they would be willing to carry on the Tops' tradition. "This is history," Mr. Peoples said. "I just can't see people not having the option of going to see the Four Tops anymore."

Mr. McNair added: "It's not about who's up there. It's about the music."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company