Abdul “Duke” Fakir Dies: The Four Tops’ Last Surviving Member Was 88

Abdul “Duke” Fakir, the last surviving member of legendary Motown Records group The Four Tops, who racked up 17 Top 20 singles from 1964-73 including the chart-topping classics “I Can’t Help Myself” and “Reach Out I’ll Be There,” died today at his home in Detroit. He was 88.

In a statement, Fakir’s family said he died of heart failure.

After a string of non-charting singles for Chess Records in the 1950s as The Four Aims, the group rebranded and signed with Berry Gordy’s wildly successful Motown Records. They sang backup on some of the label’s song by other acts before breaking out with the Holland-Dozier-Holland song “Baby I Need Your Loving” in 1964. During the next decade, they became one the label’s top acts, more than three dozen songs on the pop chart.

Alongside lead vocalist Levi Stubbs, Lawrence Payton and Renaldo “Obie” Benson, Fakir’s tenor helped create the magic that fueled such 1960s pop and R&Bs nuggets as “It’s the Same Old Song,” “Standing in the Shadows of Love” and “Bernadette.”

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The Four Tops left Motown in the early 1970s and signed with ABC/Dunhill. The group’s first two singles for their new label found them back in the Top 10 for the first time in five years with “Keeper of the Castle” and the classic “Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I Got).” They continued to record and tour into the mid-’90s with the original lineup, including a second stint with Motown in the mid’80s, but Stubbs, Payton and Benson all died of cancer between 1997 and 2005.

Born on December 26, 1935, in Detroit, Fakir met Stubbs at neighborhood football games, and they soon began singing together. They later recruited Payton and Benson and performed as The Four Aims before changing their name to The Four Tops, a moniker suggested by their musical director.

The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990. Watch their acceptance speech here.