Duke Fakir, last surviving member of the Four Tops, dies at 88

Abdul Fakir, who was known as Duke, the last remaining original member of the Four Tops, one of Motown’s bestselling and most beloved groups, died Monday at his home in Detroit. He was 88.

His family said in a statement that the cause was heart failure.

Fakir sang first tenor with the Four Tops, who were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1990. The group’s hits not only helped define the “Motown Sound” but also the entire 1960s era of pop.

Their classics included the exuberant “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)” and the urgent “Reach Out, I’ll Be There,” both of which hit No. 1, along with the barreling Top 10 staples “It’s The Same Old Song,” “Standing In the Shadows of Love” and “Bernadette.”

For two years, the Four Tops worked with Motown’s celebrated songwriting and production team Holland-Dozier-Holland (brothers Brian and Eddie Holland and Lamont Dozier). After leaving the label in 1972, the quartet earned more Top 10 records with “Keeper of the Castle” and “Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I Got”).

On all the group’s songs, Fakir’s high, smooth voice added grace to harmonies that supported the baritone lead vocals of Levi Stubbs.

The Four Tops retained their original lineup until death intervened. From 1997 to 2008, three members died of cancer. Fakir continued to record, and he was touring until the end of 2023, all the while taking on new singers to fill the group’s ranks while assuming the roles of both the Tops’ original link and the keeper of their legacy. He officially retired this year.

Abdul Kareem Fakir was born in Detroit on Dec. 26, 1935, to Nazim Ali Fakir, a factory worker who was born in Bangladesh, and Rubyleon Wren, a minister’s daughter from Sparta, Georgia, who worked as a domestic and a choir director and played the piano.

At Pershing High School, Duke Fakir excelled at sports; he met Stubbs at a neighborhood football game. The pair became good friends as well as musical partners, and they were soon joined by two other local singers, Lawrence Payton and Renaldo Benson, who was known as Obie.

The quartet originally went under the name “The Four Aims,” indicating their goal: success. But after being signed to Chicago-based Chess Records in 1956, the label, a dominant one in rhythm and blues, suggested that they change their name to avoid confusion with the Ames Brothers, a popular singing group.

The Four Tops released a series of unsuccessful singles on Chess, Columbia and Riverside Records before signing with Motown in 1962.

“We were all five to seven years older than most of the Motown artists,” Fakir told the label’s official website. “But we knew them and watched them grow up. It was like they were welcoming their big brothers home.”

The group grazed the Top 10 with their first single for Motown in 1964, “Baby I Need Your Loving.” The single remained Fakir’s favorite. “I thought it was the best song on the radio at the time,” he told the British newspaper The Express. “It changed my life completely. It even enabled me to buy my mama a house!”

The next year, the group hit No. 1 for the first time with “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch).” Over the next two years, they became the second most successful male vocal group on the Motown label, after the Temptations. In Britain, they were the label’s top act of that kind.

In 1972, when Motown relocated from Detroit to Los Angeles, the Four Tops elected to stay behind. “I’m a Detroit man,” Fakir told the city’s Metro Times. “I’m glad I didn’t go.”

Instead, the group signed a new deal with ABC/Dunhill, which revitalized their sound. Their debut single for the label, “Keeper of the Castle,” fired by a buoyant bass line and socially relevant lyrics, shot to No. 10. A romantic follow-up, “Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I Got),” pierced the Top 5.

The group proved less successful in the later 1970s, though a deal with Casablanca Records in 1981 yielded the No. 1 R&B hit “When She Was My Girl” (No. 11 on the pop chart). Two years later, the Tops re-signed with Motown, just in time to appear on the classic TV special “Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever,” on which they “battled” the Temptations in a memorable medley.

In June 1997, Payton died of liver cancer after 44 years in the group. The remaining members first toured as a trio, but the next year they hired a former Temptation, Theo Peoples, to fill their ranks. Benson died of lung cancer in 2005; Stubbs died of cancer in 2008.

In 2009, Fakir was given a Grammy lifetime achievement award.

In early 2023, the Treasury Department filed a complaint seeking more than $500,000 in unpaid taxes from Fakir and his wife, Piper Fakir. The bulk of the debt is from 2001 and 2004; the rest dates from 2011 and 2019.

He is survived by his wife of 50 years; his children Farah Fakir Cook, Nazim Bashir Fakir, Abdul Kareem Fakir, Myke Fakir, Anthony Fakir and Malik Robinson; a sister, Elena Braceful; and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Another of his children, Kai Ayne Fakir, died in 2001.

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