Abdul ‘Duke’ Fakir, last original member of Four Tops, dies aged 88
The last original member of Motown group the Four Tops has died at the age of 88.
Abdul “Duke” Fakir died with his wife and loved ones by his side at his home in Detroit on Monday.
A family spokesperson said he died of heart failure.
The group were among Motown’s most popular and enduring acts, peaking in the 1960s.
The operatic classic “Reach Out I’ll Be There” reached No1 on the UK Singles Chart in 1966.
Other songs, often sagas of romantic pain and bereavement, included “Baby I Need Your Loving,” “Standing in the Shadows of Love,” “Bernadette” and “Just Ask the Lonely.”
Many of Motown’s greatest stars, from the Supremes to Stevie Wonder, came of age at the Detroit-based company founded by Berry Gordy in the late 1950s.
Fakir, lead singer Levi Stubbs, Renaldo “Obie” Benson and Lawrence Payton had been together for a decade when Gordy signed them up in 1963.
The group called themselves the Four Aims when they started out, but soon renamed themselves the Four Tops to avoid confusion with the white harmony quartet the Ames Brothers.
Gordy and Mickey Stevenson paired them with the songwriting-production team of Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier and Brian Holland and they blended tight, haunting harmonies, with Fakir as lead tenor, behind Stubbs’ urgent, sometimes desperate baritone.
After Holland-Dozier-Holland left Motown in 1967, the Tops had more sporadic success.
“The things I love about them the most — they are very professional, they have fun with what they do, they are very loving, they have always been gentlemen,” Stevie Wonder said of them when he helped induct them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.
Fakir later toured as the Four Tops with lead vocalist Alexander Morris, Ronnie McNeir and Lawrence ‘Roquel’ Payton Jr., the son of Lawrence Payton.
“As each one of them (the original members) passed, a little bit of me left with them,” Fakir told UK Music Reviews in 2021.
“When Levi left us, I found myself in a quandary as to what I was going to do from that moment on but after a while I realised that the name together with the legacy that they had left us simply had to carry on, and judging by the audience reaction it soon became pretty evident that I did the right thing and I really do feel good about that.”
Besides the Rock Hall of Fame, their honours included being voted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998 and receiving a Grammy lifetime achievement award in 2009.
Fakir was married twice, for the last 50 years to Piper Gibson, and had seven children. Six survive him.