The Four Tops are an American vocal quartet from Detroit, who helped to define the city’s Motown sound of the 1960s. Founded as the Four Aims, lead singer Levi Stubbs, Abdul ‘Duke’ Fakir, Renaldo ‘Obie’ Benson and Lawrence Payton remained together for over four decades, performing from 1953 until 1997 without a change in personnel. During their early Motown years, the Four Tops recorded jazz standards for the company’s Workshop Jazz Records label. In addition, they sang backup on Motown singles by the Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas and others.
In 1964, Motown’s main songwriting and production team, Holland-Dozier-Holland, created a complete instrumental track without any idea of what to do with it. They decided to craft the song as a more mainstream pop song for the Four Tops and proceeded to create “Baby I Need Your Loving” from the instrumental track. On its release in mid-1964, “Baby I Need Your Loving” made it to number 11 on the Billboard pop chart. However, the song proved to be much more popular on trend-setting radio stations in key U.S. markets and has since grown in popularity over the years to be one of the group’s classic tracks. After the single’s success, the Tops were pulled away from their jazz material and began recording more material in the vein of “Baby I Need Your Loving”.
After their first number 1 hit, “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)” in June 1965, the Four Tops released a long series of successful hit singles. Among the first wave of these hits were the Top 10 “It’s the Same Old Song” (1965), “Something About You” (1965), “Shake Me, Wake Me” (1966), and “Loving You is Sweeter Than Ever” (1966). Four Tops records often represented the epitome of the Motown Sound: simple, distinctive melodies and rhymes, call-and-response lyrics, and the musical contributions of studio band, the Funk Brothers.
August 1966 brought the release of the Four Tops’ all-time biggest hit and one of the most popular Motown songs ever. “Reach Out, I’ll Be There” reached number 1 on the U.S. pop and R&B charts and the UK chart and soon became the Tops’ signature song. It was almost immediately followed by the similar-sounding “Standing in the Shadows of Love”; its depiction of heartbreak reflecting the opposite of the optimism in “Reach Out”. It was another Top 10 hit for the Tops.
The Top 10 U.S. hit “Bernadette” centered around a man’s all-consuming obsession with his lover, continued the Four Tops’ successful run into April 1967, followed by the Top 20 hits “7 Rooms of Gloom”, and “You Keep Running Away”. By now, the Tops were the most successful male Motown act in the United Kingdom (in the United States, they were second to the Temptations), and began experimenting with more mainstream pop hits. They scored hits with their versions of Tim Hardin’s “If I Were A Carpenter” in late 1967 (mid-1968 in the U.S.) and “Walk Away Renee” in early 1968. These singles and the original “I’m in a Different World” were their last hits produced by Holland-Dozier-Holland, who left Motown in 1967 after disputes with Berry Gordy Jr. over royalties and ownership of company shares. Without Holland-Dozier-Holland, the hits became less frequent.
