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Abdul ‘Duke’ Fakir, Last Original Member of the Four Tops, Dies at 88

Fakir sang first tenor on the Motown group’s legendary hits, including “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)” and “Reach Out, I’ll Be There.”

Abdul “Duke” Fakir, one of the original members of the trailblazing 1960s vocal pop group the Four Tops, died of heart failure on Monday, according to his family. He was 88.

“Our hearts are heavy as we mourn the loss of a trailblazer, icon and music legend who, through his 70-year music career, touched the lives of so many,” the family said in a statement to the Detroit Free Press.

“As the last living founding member of the iconic Four Tops music group, we find solace in Duke’s legacy living on through his music for generations to come.”

Fakir sang first tenor in the Motown group as it racked up a catalog of hits, including “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)” (1965) and “Reach Out, I’ll Be There” (1966), which both reached No. 1.

The Detroit-born act was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.

The group’s original lineup remained intact until the other three members—Lawrence Payton, Renaldo “Obie” Benson, and Levi Stubbs—died of cancer in 1997, 2005, and 2008, respectively.

Fakir continued touring and recording new music, bringing in new members as needed. He stayed on the road through the end of 2023 before officially retiring this year.

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Born in Detroit in 1935, Fakir was a high school student when he and classmate Stubbs met Benson and Payton, who attended a different school, at a party. The four realized they could blend their individual stylings and sounds together—Stubbs taking lead vocals, Benson taking bass—as a quartet, and debuted in 1954 as the Four Aims.

Fakir told a music blog in 2016 that the four had been aware of one another as musicians on the local scene, having each sung with different groups around town. Colliding at that “kind of bourgeoise” party in 1953, though, something magical was sparked.

“We told Levi to just pick a song and sing the lead,” he recalled. “We’d just back him up. Well, when he started, we all fell in like we’d been rehearsing the song for months! Our blend was incredible. We were just looking at each other as we were singing, and right after we said, ’Man, this is a group! This is a group!’”

Although the lineup was cemented, the name didn’t last, and in 1964, the Four Tops were signed to Motown Records by the legendary record executive Berry Gordy. The group’s first No. 1 single, “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch),” was released the following year.

“Duke was first tenor—smooth, suave, and always sharp,” Gordy said in a statement to the Associated Press. “For 70 years, he kept the Four Tops’ remarkable legacy intact.”

When Motown migrated to Los Angeles, the Four Tops stayed behind in Detroit, stubbornly loyal to their stomping grounds.

“I’ve always loved Detroit,” Fakir told The Detroit News in 2022. “I don’t think about it in the negative, what would have happened if we had not stayed in Detroit. I know what happened because of us being in Detroit, that we kept our togetherness and it just paid off for years and years and years of enjoying exactly what we did.”

Between 1964 and 1967, the Four Tops scored 11 top-20 hits, including “Baby I Need Your Loving,” “Standing in the Shadows of Love,” “Bernadette” and “Just Ask the Lonely.” The following decade, they enjoyed pockmarked success with two top-1o hits: “Keeper of the Castle” and “Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I’ve Got).”

By the 1980s, their influence had declined, and the group managed just one last top-20 hit with “When She Was My Girl.”

Writing in the foreword of his 2022 memoir, I’ll Be There: My Life with The Four Tops, Fakir noted, “Most singing groups didn’t stay together for a lifetime, but The Four Tops did. Not until Lawrence Payton, Obie Benson and Levi Stubbs sang their last notes did we change our line-up.

“Now I’m the last Top left alive to tell our story and I’ve asked myself, ‘why me?’ and ‘what kept us together for so long?’

“In my view, most of it was out of our hands,” he continued. “Something bigger was at play from the very beginning. In the middle of the 20th century worlds were colliding, times were changing, and people were ready for a message of love and togetherness—and they could get that from music.”

Fakir is survived by his wife of 50 years, Piper Fakir; a sister, Elena Braceful; six children; 13 grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren. Another child, Kai Ayne Fakir, died in 2001, according to The New York Times.