Last surviving founder Duke Fakir has passed; we remember the Four Tops with this ranking of their 20 best songs

(July 23, 2024).  Abdul “Duke” Fakir carried the torch for the legendary Motown group the Four Tops for more than fifteen years as its last surviving founding member after the earlier deaths of Obie Benson, Lawrence Payton, Sr. and original lead singer Levi Stubbs.

Today, we mourn Fakir’s passing at the age of 88, reportedly of heart failure (on July 22), less than a week after officially retiring from touring with the quartet, which he’d founded with the other three members more than 70 years earlier.

Formed in 1953, the Tops first recorded as the Four Aims for various labels, including Chess Records and Columbia Records, before changing their name to avoid confusion with the popular group The Ames Brothers.  The Detroit group’s success came more than a decade later when they signed with Motown and earned their first big hit, “Baby, I Need Your Lovin’” in 1964.

Within two years, they had two No. 1 Hot 100 singles in “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)” and “Reach Out I’ll Be There,” both of which also topped the Billboard soul chart.  Like most of their big hits with Motown, these were written and produced by the legendary team of Holland-Dozier-Holland, with whom the Tops helped transform the Detroit-based label into one of the best American Dream stories ever told. 

While the Four Tops were among Motown’s greatest male groups, along with the Temptations and Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, they were able to find continued success after leaving the label in 1972.  After signing with ABC-Dunhill Records that year, they scored with big hits like “Keeper of the Castle” and the classic “Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I’ve Got).”  The latter of those two, plus its followup single “Are You Man Enough” from the Shaft in Africa movie sequel, both reached No. 2 on the Billboard Soul chart in 1973.

That success placed them among several ex-Motown acts to have huge hits with other labels that year, including the Spinners (Atlantic Records), Isley Brothers (T-Neck), and Gladys Knight & the Pips (Buddah).  The Tops would continue to have moderate soul chart success throughout the 1970s, but nothing came close to repeating the No. 1 near-miss status of “Ain’t No Woman” and “Are You Man Enough?”

It wasn’t until the group moved to Casablanca Records in 1981 that they were able to return to No. 1 soul (and top 20 pop) with the smash “When She Was My Girl,” which topped the soul list in October that year.  That otherwise serious tune’s success was no doubt helped by the hilariously ad libbed line by Stubbs “my big legged girl is gone” during the song’s second chorus. 

It made the Tops one of the few acts up to that time to have chart-topping hits in three different decades (and with three different labels each decade). Their last top-40 single was 1988’s “Indestructible,” on Arista Records, which teamed them with fellow Motown legend Smokey Robinson (the Tops had also briefly returned to and left Motown again by then).  

What was more impressive than their more than 24-year string of Billboard top-40 hits was the fact that the quartet’s original members remained together throughout all of their chart success — and for 44 years total — until Lawrence Payton died at age 59 in 1997.  Their longevity — at the time an impressive 28 years with the same four members — was a feature story on Casey Kasem’s “American Top 40” countdown show in 1981 while “When She Was My Girl” was charting.

Benson and Stubbs died in 2005 and 2008, respectively, leaving Fakir to carry the band’s torch with new members touring for the past 16 years.  He announced his official retirement from the group in July 2024, just days before his death on July 22.

The four original Tops were inducted into several Halls of Fame as a result of their legendary contributions to the American pop soundtrack — including the R&B Hall of Fame, the Vocal Group Hall of Fame, the Grammy Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  Their two pop No. 1s — “I Can’t Help Myself” and “Reach Out” — are both Grammy Hall of Fame inductees.

Also, as part of its legacy, the song “Reach Out (I’ll Be There)” was voted the best R&B-to-pop crossover song of the 1960s by the longstanding “Lost Pop Hits” Facebook group during a tournament run by yours truly in 2018, beating out 127 other contenders in a field consisting of many of the ‘60s greatest soul/pop classics.  

And now, with Fakir’s passing, the blog remembers the legendary (original) Four Tops with the following ranking of their greatest hits.  This list is subjective and based solely on this blogger’s humble opinion (and no, “Reach Out” is not No. 1).  So keep reading to see which song is (and please feel free to comment with your own thoughts on what the Four Tops’ greatest tunes were).

Twenty. “Catfish” (1976)

The Tops’ first entry into the developing disco scene in 1976 was a six-and-half-minute ode to a girl who “made their nature rise” and peaked at No. 7 soul and No. 71 pop.  

Nineteen. “River Deep, Mountain High” (w/ the Supremes) (1971)

Surprisingly, the Tops and Supremes (post-Diana Ross) had a bigger hit with “River Deep, Mountain High” produced by Ashford & Simpson than Tina Turner did with the Phil Spector-produced original five years earlier.  

Eighteen. “MacArthur Park” (1971)

For as many original hits as the Tops had, they scored nearly as many hit remakes, including this respectable rehash of the classic Richard Harris smash, “MacArthur Park,” which they took to No. 38 pop in 1971. Of course, Donna Summer would score the biggest hit with her No. 1 remake seven years later. 

Seventeen. “It’s All In the Game” (1970)

The song “It’s All In the Game” is associated with a lot of history.  It was the first No. 1 song on the Hot 100 by a Black recording act in 1958 when Tommy Edwards topped the chart less than two months after the list’s inception that year.  It is also the only song written by a U.S. Vice President (Charles Dawes, who served under Calvin Coolidge from 1925-29).  The Tops remade it into a No. 24 pop hit (No. 6 soul) in 1970.

Sixteen. “7 Rooms of Gloom” (1967)

This fast-moving H-D-H rocker featured Stubbs alternating spoken-word verses with his signature wailing, all over minor keys that matched the song’s theme of gloominess over a lost love.  This was a soulful variation on the “house is not a home” theme made popular by Dionne Warwick (and later Luther Vandross).  Oh, and the tambourine shaking on this one — while subtle — was fast and furious, courtesy of Motown’s Funk Brothers.  

Fifteen. “One Chain Don’t Make No Prison”

This was the first single from the Tops’ 1974 album Meeting of the Minds on Dunhill.  Lyrically, it questioned why the protagonist was being made to suffer for one bad mistake, noting that “one rain don’t make no river, and one punch don’t make no fight.”  It went to No. 3 soul that year and just missed the pop top 40 (No. 42 peak).

Fourteen. “If I Were A Carpenter” (1968)

Before it became commonplace in the 1980s with the success of Michael Jackson’s Thriller and many albums afterwards, it was rare for an album to pull off six top-20 singles in the 1960s.  The Tops’ Reach Out might have been the first to do it.  “If I Were A Carpenter,” their remake of a folk standard by Tim Hardin, became the album’s sixth consecutive top-20 hit on both the pop and soul charts in 1968.

Thirteen. “Walk Away Renee” (1967)

It’s hard to go wrong with this Baroque pop classic originally made by fellow American group the Left Banke, who took it to the top five in 1966.  The Tops’ faithful remake — one of five on this list — was one of those six top-20 singles from the phenomenal Reach Out album.  Beautiful!

Twelve. “It’s the Same Old Song” (1965)

Of the Tops’ 24 top 40 pop hits, only five reached the top five. The classic upbeat H-D-H number “It’s the Same Old Song” is one of those, peaking at No. 5 pop and No. 2 soul in 1965.  

Eleven. “Baby, I Need Your Loving” (1964)

The song that got the ball rolling for the Tops in 1964, “Baby, I Need Your Loving” introduced us to baritone Levi Stubb’s amazing, gospel-honed singing voice.  As with most of their hits afterwards, H-D-H recorded Stubbs singing in tenor to give the song the feel of yearning that the lyrics invoked.  Obviously, it worked: “Loving” peaked at No. 11 U.S. pop and No. 4 in Canada.  

Ten. “Standing In The Shadows of Love” (1966)

The Tops had three No. 1 soul songs: “I Can’t Help Myself,” “Reach Out,” and “When She Was My Girl.”  They were outnumbered by four No. 2 hits: “It’s the Same Old Song,” “Ain’t No Woman,” “Are You Man Enough?,” and the followup to “Reach Out”: “Standing on the Shadows of Love.”  “Shadows” was a near replica of “Reach Out” musically.  But lyrically they were total opposites, with “Shadows” lamenting a pending breakup.

Nine. “You Keep Running Away” (1967)

Recorded in the style of “Bernadette,” but with a much more subtle arrangement, “You Keep Running Away” was only included on a Greatest Hits package during its original release in 1967.  But its single release came in the midst of a hit streak that included seven consecutive top-20 singles from 1966-67, six of which were on the group’s iconic Reach Out album.

Eight. “When She Was My Girl” (1981)

The Four Tops were a welcome return to the charts in 1981 after “When She Was My Girl” was released.  They had been completely absent from the Hot 100 for five years prior (disco wasn’t kind to them) and had only moderate success on the soul chart.  “Girl,” with its tongue-in-cheek line “the big-legged girl is gone” became the group’s third and final No. 1 soul and top-20 pop hit in the fall of ‘81. 

Seven. “Are You Man Enough?” (1973)

Blaxploitation movies — or films that capitalized on ethnic stereotypes of Black people during the 1970s — were the rage from 1971-75.  The Tops’ soulful “Are You Man Enough?” hailed from the sequel to 1971’s Shaft, called Shaft in Africa.  While the movie and soundtrack weren’t nearly as successful as their predecessors, the Tops did manage to get a No. 2 soul hit with this track (held out of No. 1 by Aretha Franklin’s “Angel” in August 1973).

Six. “Still Water (Love)” (1970)

Smokey Robinson co-wrote and co-produced this socially conscious original piece for the Tops in 1970, following the departure of H-D-H from Motown and after the group had minimal success with the label’s in-house song creator Norman Whitfield who was having much better success with the Temptations. “Still Water (Love)” was a top-five soul and top-20 pop hit in late 1970. 

Five. “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)” (1965)

While “Reach Out” gets most of the love as the Tops’ “signature song,” “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)” is just as important in their large canon of hits.  It’s their first No. 1 single and is equally as ubiquitous as “Reach Out.”  As a tandem, the two songs are among the most recognizable tunes of the 1960s and Motown’s sound.  Holland-Dozier-Holland wrote and produced ten No. 1 hits for the Supremes, but none of those have stood the test of time like “Reach Out” and “I Can’t Help Myself,” thanks not only to the H-D-H footprint, but also to Stubbs’ undeniable vocal prowess.  

Four. “Ain’t No Woman (Like The One I’ve Got)” (1973)

Few soul songs are as beautiful as this gem produced and co-written by Dennis Lambert.  With lyrics like “Every drop of rain is glad it found her; Heaven must have made her just for me,” how can you go wrong?  Awash in strings, the song signaled the direction that soul music was heading at the time: more melodic, fuller sounding productions with lyrics that celebrated love, unity and beauty, themes completely missing from music today.  “Ain’t No Woman” was the Tops’ biggest hit away from Motown.  

Three. “Keeper of the Castle” (1972)

With its signature chicken-scratch guitar intro, 1972’s “Keeper” embodied early 1970s soul better than anything the Tops had made while they were with Motown, which they’d left earlier that year.  The song was full of advice for men disillusioned by society with the temptation to leave their families, whether physically or emotionally.  “Be a father to your children; a provider of all their daily needs.”  That message is needed more now than in 1972.    

Two. “Reach Out I’ll Be There” (1966)

In a 1960s Soul/Pop Crossover tournament this blogger ran in a Facebook music group called “Lost Pop Hits,” the Tops’ “Reach Out” beat Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me” to be crowned the best crossover song of the decade.  “Reach Out” had to beat another Tops tune, “I Can’t Help Myself,” to reach the finals.  Both songs are undeniably the Tops’ biggest, but on this list of personal greatest hits, that honor goes to…

One. “Bernadette” (1967)

Yep, this 1967 H-D-H classic — one of the last the production team created for Motown before leaving the label later that year — is my favorite Tops tune, and it’s no wonder, with Stubbs’ most urgent-sounding vocal performance in a catalogue full of gripping ones.  The song — one of the six singles culled from the album Reach Out — peaked at No. 4 pop (and No. 3 soul), but it ranks No. 1 on my Four Tops list… always has, always will.

R.I.P. Abdul “Duke” Fakir (December 26, 1935 – July 22, 2024)

DJRob

DJRob (he/him) is a freelance music blogger from the East Coast who covers R&B, hip-hop, disco, pop, rock and country genres – plus lots of music news and current stuff!  You can follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @djrobblog and on Meta’s Threads.

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