Four Tops founding member Duke Fakir dead at 88 due to heart failure months after retiring from 70-year music career
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.
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 Mary Wilson of the Supremes.
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, lead singer Levi Stubbs, Renaldo “Obie” Benson and Lawrence 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.
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