Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops Passes Away At Age 72
From left, Renaldo “Obie” Benson, Levi Stubbs, Abdul “Duke” Fakir and Lawrence Payton
Levi was a cool brotha. Known to some as the Black Sinatra, Mr. Stubbs passed away in his sleep yesterday at age 72 in his Detroit home. He’d been ill from cancer and a stroke.
With Stubbs in the lead, the Four Tops sold millions of records, including such hits as “Baby I Need Your Loving,” “Reach Out (I’ll Be There)” and “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch).”
The group performed for more than four decades without a change in personnel. Stubbs’ death leaves one surviving member of the original group: Abdul “Duke” Fakir.
Stubbs “fits right up there with all the icons of Motown,” said Audley Smith, chief operating officer of the Motown Historical Museum. “His voice was as unique as Marvin’s or as Smokey’s or as Stevie’s.”
The Four Tops began singing together in 1953 under the group name the Four Aims and signed a deal with Chess Records. They later changed their names to the Four Tops to avoid being confused with the Ames Brothers.
They also recorded for Red Top, Riverside and Columbia Records and toured supper clubs.
The Four Tops signed with Motown Records in 1963 and produced 20 Top-40 hits over the next 10 years, making music history with the other acts in Berry Gordy’s Motown stable.
Their biggest hits were recorded between 1964 and 1967 with the in-house songwriting and production team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland. Both 1965’s “I Can’t Help Myself” and 1966’s “Reach Out” went to No. 1 on the Billboard pop chart.
Other hits included “Shake Me, Wake Me” (1966); “Bernadette” and “Standing in the Shadows of Love” (both 1967).
They toured for decades afterward and reached the charts as late as 1988 with “Indestructible” on Arista Records. In 1986, Stubbs provided the voice for Audrey II the man-eating plant in the film “Little Shop of Horrors.”
The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990 and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Original Top Lawrence Payton died of liver cancer in 1997. Renaldo “Obie” Benson died of lung cancer in 2005.
Stubbs was born in 1936 in Detroit and attended Pershing High School, where he sang with Fakir. They met fellow Detroiters Payton and Benson while singing at a mutual friend’s birthday party, then decided to form a group.
“These are four of the greatest people I have ever known. They were major pros even before they came to Motown,” Gordy said when the Four Tops’ star was unveiled in Hollywood.
Stubbs is survived by his wife, five children and 11 grandchildren.
Of course none of us here are of age to remember Motown in its heyday, but the Four Tops and other stellar Motown groups raised a lot of us. Even as a kid, I wanted his trademark beard and listening to the Top’s amazing sound takes me back to a time where things were very different. A lot of giants have passed on recently, so please remember their influence. As you watch these videos, you’ll realize nobody is singing like this anymore.
Rest In Peace Levi Stubbs.
Ain’t No Woman Like The One I Got
When She Was My Girl
Baby I Need Your Lovin’
It’s the Same Old Song
Sugar Pie Honey Bunch
Reach Out I’ll Be There
Walk Away Renee
Battle of the Groups 1985 (Look how happy Levi was singing with the fellas)
October 18th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Stubbs.
October 18th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Thanks brotha. Fixed. Ain’t been to sleep yet.
October 18th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Thanks Mizzo, I was gonna give a shout out over at blackmystory. We must never forget our icons.
A question? with the passing of Stubbs, White, Hayes, Teddy not singing anymore, are there any real men on the scence out there singing in America Inc?
Not males, but manly men who don’t look or act like the accepted images of the emasculated knee-grows, like prince, Jackson, etc? And not parodies of strong men, like the thug rapper images either! Men, that both mature men women can look admirable to.
Just asking!
October 18th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Sankofa
You are right about the real soul singers like Stubbs, Luther Ingram, Issac Hayes and those who came before the emasculation of the Black Male singer in the 1980’s using the tenor voices of Eddie Kendricks and Russell Tompkins Jr. as the template of the crossover male singers. But we can’t front on Prince’s El DeBarge or Luther Vandross contributions to elevating Black Music and they did great groundbreaking work but today’s modern Black Singers are taking the “Mandingo” and ” Thug Postures” along with the crossover model and are making it worse.
Terrence Trent D’Arby talked about this issue of the emasculating Black Male singer 20 years ago and wondered where was the modern Wilson Picketts, Levi Stubbs, Eddie LeVerts, Jerry Butlers, and Teddy Pendergrass and was called racist for merely pointing out something that could’nt be swept under the rug. It ruined his career in America when he called most Black Male R&B singers who toned down the gospel elements “eunuchs”.
I am afraid if you want real black-based R&B MALE singers you will have to catch an oldies show or find alternative sources because the Black and White record labels it is phony pouser singers like Usher, Chris Brown, R. Kelly, R.I.P. Levi Stubbs, everytime I would listen to the opening strings to “Reach Out” after the Funk Brothers would come crashing in with that 50 tons of funk I always look for your yearning voice to take it all the way.
October 18th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
I hear dat bro. Not bashing on Prince or El’s talent, just viewing the image they present, making African men “safe’ for European women to listen to without their men getting their guns.
Those images of the eunochs along with the thug animal all contribute to and used to control us and our musical legacies, as the STEAL Funk, blues and Soul and water it down and re make it as ….Urban contemptious music.
I mean bloody Justin Timberlake, R&B Award winner over who?
Even in my native Jamaica, you got some fucked up looking guys on stage, either feminin looking or just plain crazy looking as musical icons?
Another reason why we need to control our images as much as controling our other resources!
Big props to D’Arby for tackling that, as I unfairly judged him as Mini Vanili solo. thanks for that nuugget, brotherman
October 18th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
I would say Will Downing.
October 18th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
There are no real men singing because America doesn’t prize men the way it once did. We’re an anti-competition, anti-testosterone, nanny state that prizes weepy compassion over aggression, even harmless, sensual, lyrical aggression in songs like “Come On Go With Me” and “Turn Off the Lights.” Just look at one of the songs of the 1980s, ‘Sexual Healing.’ Healing? We need to make sex a curative rather than a recreative act? Why? So women will think we’re sensitive and we care? Please…. Imagine the reaction to that song if it had been re-written as ‘Sexual Kneeling,’ which is what we end up asking women to do, anyway (and which is what all guys were imagining as they heard the song play….. admit it.)
Now…. in reference to our next president, Mr. Obama, can you imagine him listening to Pendergrass? I can’t. I bet he has Kenny G — or worse, the Force MDs — in his CD player. He’s about to keep ushering the country down the road to gender confusion. I’d be shocked if he broke out anything manly on a Friday night after the girls went to sleep.
I think Hip Hop swung too far one way when it advocated slapping ‘bitches’ and all that….. but who can blame men for singing that stuff when simple, manly songs of the ’60s and ’70s were undone by singers like Carl Carlton?
October 18th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
BeinMiceElf
-Not to criticize, just noticing that your name-sake’s inspiration-Sly- kinda fell on the metrosexual side himself.
-That being said, yeah, I agree with your first paragraph for the most part. We’ve become bitches who are afraid to point out the differential nature of men and owmen vis-a-vis sexuality.
-There is NOTHING worse musically than Kenny G. Period.
About a decade ago, I was involved with Farah Fakir, Duke Fakir’s daughter and then a student at Howard Law. Spent thanksgiving at Duke’s house that year. He is one of the coolest men I’ve ever met. Just a nice guy who treated me very well.
October 18th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
I agree with you wholeheartedly BME
Sexual Kneeling LOL
I dug the Force MD’s.
Surface too.
To pull a woman like Michelle dudes gotta have a back sometime. Figadeal me?
October 18th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Mizzo, Will downing is required listening for cats like us, Temple and those with over standing. But really, can he stand the test of time against some of the cats “they” push as ideal?
Mmmm! Temple, Teacher…what really the fuck is Metrosexual? Is that another fancy appellation to further confuse the confused that never got any two parent love?
October 19th, 2008 at 1:52 am
I remember when that Lenny Williams song “I love You” came out in 1978 (I was 12 lolol) and when he sang you just had to listen because he was expressing some deep feelings for whomever he was in love with. There are no “Real Black (R&B ) music genres anymore, I also think Disco had a lot to do with the death of the strong black male singer because of the auidence who purchased the music in the late 70’s elevated pop-soul singers like Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor and Patti La Belle to a majority white male and female and particularly white gay audiences thereby killing the Black Band and Gospel- based Black blues male and female shouters that occupied my childhood especially if you went to the Barber Shop.
It’s my opinion that’s where the virulent anti- gay and female rhetoric of Hip- Hop came from when Brothas looking for a real male prescence in Black Music latched on to the archtypes of the Mandingo and Thug personas when the male singer’s voice became crossover metrosexuals like Micheal Jackson and to this day that is the archtype from Ne-Yo, Usher, Chris Brown and others. When Justin Timberlake butchers “Got to Give It Up” on VH-1 and they consider that shit “THROWING DOWN” I want to throw up because I remember when Giants truly walked the earth and played Black Music with SOUL !!!
October 19th, 2008 at 3:49 am
“I love you” by Lenny Williams, considered by cats I know as the greatest love song ever. Even when the singers weren’t “manly”, just a for real brother, they still get shafted.
Take the case of the Bobby Brown and Ralph Tresvant(sp) tug-a-war for lead of new edition. Bobby Brown’s masculinity even at a young age was too scary for some. He was too much his own man (yeah, over look the Whitney crack drama for a bit) but I feel this is one minor evidence of the emasculating of real male singers.
October 19th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
One reason why I come here is knowledge and opinions, and the emasculation of male R&B singers is fascinating stuff. Thanks for sharing.
And in memory of Mr. Stubbs, I downloaded Still Waters Run Deep (1970 or so) on my iPod this weekend.
October 19th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
Sanfoka, I remember that tension between Ralph and Bobby who were frankly much more alike than different. Ralph was more Russell Tompkins (Stylistics) while Bobby wanted to be Marvin Gaye (who was metrosexual) but had a Joe Tex - David Ruffin type stage thing going on. But emaculating Black Singers was nothing new, for every great Jackie Wilson track you had him singing “Danny Boy” (ugh). Unfortuantely Jackson’s “Off the Wall” created a monster that couldn’t be contained. Black Male singers had to feminme and not get White Females hot and bothered, so it was a buisness decision to create ‘crossover artists’.
October 20th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
The Four Tops and the masterful Levi Stubbs. You have planted wonderful,beautiful songs in my mind. I will never forget the good old days.
October 20th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
I miss songs like “I miss you” by Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes. It seemed like every song he sand was from something he went through. When he talked about hittin the lottery, in most cases, cats ain’t tryin to look back. Dude was talkin about goin back an makin things right. That’s some real stuff
October 20th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
That was my group.
October 20th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Love the Blue Notes man, my dad went to school w/Teddy P. I think if I could be any of those cats back then it would be Teddy P.
In “Come Go With Me”, he literally talked that woman out of the bar.
Now that was mackin’!
October 20th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
I agree with BME and Mizzo. The 2 Live Stews have a phrase called “The Sissification of America”; basically saying that we get softer after each generation. that’s probably why “Fight Club” is one of my favorite movies.