Four Tops: Seven Lean Years, Levi Stubbs' Strain and Missing Pan Am 103

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The Four Tops formed in Detroit in 1953 when Levi Stubbs and Abdul "Duke" Fakir of Pershing High met Renaldo "Obie" Benson and Lawrence Payton of Northern High at a birthday party. First called the Four Aims, they renamed themselves to avoid confusion with the Ames Brothers and signed with Chess in 1956, then spent seven years without a hit, moving through Chess, Red Top, Riverside and Columbia and working the supper club circuit and backing Billy Eckstine. Berry Gordy brought them to Motown in 1963, where they first sang jazz for a subsidiary and backgrounds for the Supremes before Holland-Dozier-Holland reworked an instrumental into Baby I Need Your Loving in 1964.

Holland-Dozier-Holland wrote at the top of baritone Stubbs' range so listeners could hear the strain, layering the Andantes on high harmonies. After the writers left in 1967, the group worked with Frank Wilson, and Benson co-wrote a song about police brutality in Berkeley that the Tops declined and Marvin Gaye recorded as What's Going On. When Motown moved to Los Angeles in 1972 the Four Tops stayed in Detroit and signed with ABC Dunhill. In December 1988 a long Top of the Pops taping made them miss Pan Am Flight 103, which went down over Lockerbie.

• At ABC Dunhill, Payton took on arranging, producing and some lead vocals on hits including Keeper of the Castle and Ain't No Woman (Like the One I've Got).
• They returned in 1981 with the Casablanca R&B chart-topper When She Was My Girl.
• A 1983 Motown battle-of-the-bands TV segment with the Temptations led to years of joint touring.
• At Arista from 1987 they worked with producers including Phil Collins and recorded a duet with Aretha Franklin.
• The original lineup lasted 44 years until Payton's death in 1997; Fakir, the last founder, retired in July 2024 and died two days later.