The Four Tops

One of Motown's most consistent hitmakers and its longest-lived original lineup, the Four Tops have charted with scores of upbeat love songs featuring Levi Stubbs' rough-hewn lead vocals. In 1994 The Four Tops celebrated four decades together, without a single change in personnel. The four members met at a party in Detroit and soon began calling themselves the Four Aims. They were signed to Chess Records in 1956 and soon changed their name to the Four Tops to avoid confusion with the Ames Brothers. The single “Kiss Me Baby” b/w “Could It Be You” was the first of a string of supper-club–style flops that lasted for seven years on a series of labels (Red Top, Riverside, and Columbia). All the while, the group performed in top clubs.

By 1964, they had joined up with old friend Berry Gordy Jr., the founder of Motown Records. Gordy had them cut the unreleased Breaking Through for his experimental Workshop Jazz subsidiary. Later that year they were finally directed toward contemporary soul. Under the wing of Motown’s top production and writing team, Holland-Dozier-Holland, the Four Tops were launched with “Baby I Need Your Loving,” which went to #11 in 1964. Over the next eight years they made almost 30 appearances on the chart, and Levi Stubbs (whose brother Joe sang in the Falcons) became an international star and a major influence on other singers from the ’60s to the present (in 1986 Billy Bragg had a U.K. hit with “Levi Stubbs Tears”).

The group’s 1965 hits included “Ask the Lonely” (#24), “Same Old Song” (#5), and “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch),” which was #1. “Reach Out I’ll Be There” hit the top of the pop chart in October 1966. The quartet followed up with “Standing in the Shadows of Love” (#6, 1967).

Like other top Motown acts, the Four Tops also became popular in major nightclubs around the world. Even in their hit-making prime, the Tops had less athletic choreography than the Temptations, for example, and the group was equally comfortable handling standards, show tunes, and big ballads. Like virtually all of Motown’s first-tier acts, the Tops sought the longevity and stability of a career built equally on live appearances and records. In 1967 they scaled the charts with “Bernadette” (#4) and “Seven Rooms of Gloom” (#14); but when Holland-Dozier-Holland left Motown in 1967 to form their own label, the group’s chart successes dwindled. In fact, two of the Four Tops’ bigger hits from 1968 were covers: the Left Banke’s “Walk Away Renee” (#14) and Tim Hardin’s “If I Were a Carpenter” (#20). While many historians view HDH’s departure as an irreparable blow to the group, in fact, the Tops cut a number of adventurous and successful singles under the guidance of other Motown staff producers, including “River Deep, Mountain High” with the Jean Terrell - led Supremes (#14 pop, #7 R&B, 1970), and “Still Water (Love)” (#11 pop, #4 R&B, 1970). In addition, Obie Benson cowrote Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On.”

In 1972 the group left Motown for ABC/Dunhill, where it quickly recorded a couple of million-sellers: “Keeper of the Castle” (#10) and in 1973 “Ain’t No Woman Like the One I’ve Got” (#4). It proved to be only a brief pop chart resurgence, though the group continued to hit the R&B Top 20, with “Seven Lonely Nights” and “Catfish.” The Tops continued to tour the world, performing to packed houses. In 1981 the group moved to Casablanca Records and released the comeback hit, “When She Was My Girl” (#11 pop, #1 R&B). Two years later the Tops were back at Motown, and after performing in a “battle of the bands” with the Temptations on the Motown 25th-anniversary television special, embarked on the first of several coheadlining tours with that group, billed as T’n’T. The first tour ran nearly three years, went around the world, and included a sold-out stint on Broadway.

In 1986 Stubbs provided the voice for the man-eating plant Audrey II in the film Little Shop of Horrors; in 1985 the group had its last Motown hit: “Sexy Ways” (#21 R&B). Like many older Motown artists, the Four Tops sought another label, and in 1988 they signed with Arista. “Indestructible” (#35 pop, #66 R&B) marked another resurgence in the band’s career, especially in the U.K., where their “Loco in Acapulco,” from the soundtrack of the Phil Collins film Buster, was a Top 10 hit. Chartwise, the Four Tops had become one of the most popular American acts in the U.K., where a remix of “Reach Out I’ll Be There” hit #11 in 1988, and the saloon standard “It’s All in the Game” had gone to #5 in 1970.

In 1989 the group appeared on Aretha Franklin’s Through the Storm, and in 1990 Stevie Wonder inducted the Tops into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They returned to Motown in the ’90s and recorded a Christmas album, but tragedy struck in 1997 when Lawrence Payton, the architect of the Tops’ harmonies, died of liver cancer. The remaining members eventually recruited Theo Peoples, a former member of the Temptations [see entry]. They continue to perform. In 2000 Stubbs claimed that the group had completed an album with the help of former Motown writer Norman Whitfield, but as of mid-2001 it had not been released.

from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)