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.
GettyMotown group the Four Tops that was known for such hits as Reach Out, I’ll Be There, and Standing in the Shadows of Love[/caption]
GettyAbdul Duke Fakir, the last surviving original member of the beloved Motown group the Four Tops, has died[/caption]
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.
“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.
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’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 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.
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.
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