Formed while all four members were still in high school or had just graduated, the Four Tops became one of the most popular and beloved singing groups on Motown Records, the Detroit-based label founded by Berry Gordy. They released 24 Top 40 singles, starting with their 1964 hit “Baby I Need Your Loving,” and topped the charts with two soul classics, “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)” and “Reach Out I’ll Be There,” anchored by their deep-voiced lead singer Levi Stubbs.
Mr. Fakir provided backing vocals with bandmates Renaldo “Obie” Benson and Lawrence Payton, contributing lush harmonies that came to define the band’s polished, pop-oriented sound. “My voice wasn’t the one that was front and center,” he wrote in the preface to his 2022 memoir, “I’ll Be There,” “but none of us wanted all the glory. We weren’t the most famous band in the world, but we were famous enough.”
Unlike their slightly more famous labelmates the Temptations, the Tops have remained remarkably stable, staying together for more than four decades. The original members were still performing when the group was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, and have only been separated by death, with each of Mr. Fakir’s longtime members dying of cancer between 1997 and 2008.
Mr. Fakir and the other Tops began singing together in 1954, in a spontaneous performance at a Detroit graduation party. They called themselves the Four Aims, in homage to their ambitions, but soon renamed themselves the Four Tops—to avoid confusion with the Ames Brothers—and signed with Chess Records in Chicago, beginning a busy seven-year period in which they toured the country in a beat-up station wagon, played lounges in Las Vegas and provided backing vocals for jazz singer Billy Eckstine.
After signing with Motown in 1963, the group reinvented themselves. The label’s rigorous artist development program taught them to walk, dress, and talk to journalists like they were musical royalty, and the production and songwriting team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland helped them develop a soulful new sound.
Over the next few years, the group helped Motown headquarters establish its reputation as Hitsville USA, releasing Top 10 singles including “It’s the Same Old Song,” “Standing in the Shadows of Love,” “Bernadette” and “Reach Out I’ll Be There,” which became one of their signature songs, to the surprise of Mr. Fakir and his fellow singers.
Released in 1966, the song was in a higher key than Mr. Fakir was accustomed to; he said he had to strain to hit his notes in the studio without resorting to falsetto. When Gordy called the band into his office a few weeks later and played the finished song, “we begged him not to release it, to let us go down to the studio and record something else,” Mr. Fakir told The Wall Street Journal in 2013.
“For us, the song was a little strange. Berry pulled it out and said, ‘I’m going to put it out, and you’re going to be surprised.'”
The director was right. Mr. Fakir recalls that when he first heard the song on his car radio, he nearly burst into tears.
“I went to the office and asked to see Berry. His secretary told me he was in a meeting. I went in anyway. He looked up, surprised. I said, ‘Berry, please don’t ever ask us what we think about our files again.'”
The song spent two weeks at number one, was covered by singers including Diana Ross and Gloria Gaynor, and was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry in 2022.
The fourth of six children, Abdul Kareem Fakir was born in Detroit on December 26, 1935. His parents divorced when he was about 7, and he was raised primarily by his mother, a pianist from Sparta, Georgia, who led the church choir and became a pastor. His father was a factory worker from what is now Bangladesh, where he was a street singer and sitar maker before moving west.
“My father paid his dues for the family and my mother worked very hard. But it was a struggle,” Mr Fakir told Britain’s Telegraph newspaper in 2018. “I didn’t realise how poor we were until one day at school I realised I had a rope tied around me instead of a belt.”
At Pershing High School, Mr. Fakir sang, ran track, played football and basketball and became friends with Stubbs, which led to the formation of the Four Tops.
The band later toured the Jim Crow-era South, where Mr. Fakir said he feared for his life when he accidentally walked into the wrong waiting room at a segregated bus station. (A white man put a gun to his head and told Mr. Fakir to leave.)
But he had fond memories of his Motown years, which he described as “one big family.” He golfed with Smokey Robinson, played cards with Marvin Gaye and was briefly engaged to Mary Wilson of the Supremes, who teamed up with the Four Tops in 1970 for a popular cover of “River Deep — Mountain High.”
When Motown moved to Los Angeles two years later, the Four Tops remained in Detroit, signed with ABC/Dunhill, and released two more Top 10 hits, “Keeper of the Castle” and “Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I’ve Got).” Their final Top 40 single, aptly titled “Indestructible,” was released by Arista in 1988.
In December, the band was scheduled to board Pan Am Flight 103 from London to Detroit, with a stopover in New York. The plane exploded over Scotland in a terrorist attack known as the Lockerbie bombing. Mr. Fakir and his bandmates missed the flight because they had been called back to the studio for a performance on the British show “Top of the Pops.”
“This experience really highlighted the fact that we were here for something we had no control over, and we should use it to spread love,” Fakir told the Detroit Free Press much later.
Mr. Fakir’s first marriage to Inez Clinscales ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife of 50 years, Piper Fakir; their daughter, Farah; two sons from his first marriage, Nazim and Abdul Fakir Jr.; three children from other relationships, Anthony and Myke Fakir and Malik Robinson; a sister; 13 grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren. A daughter from his first marriage, Kai Ayne Fakir, died in 2000.
In recent years, Mr. Fakir has continued to tour and also worked on a Four Tops musical, trying to capitalize on the popularity of Broadway shows, including “Motown” and “Ain’t Too Proud,” about the Temptations. Outside of music, he has invested in real estate and small businesses, including a wine bar. (“I made a lot of money,” he said, “but I drank too much. So I left.”)
In 2023, the Treasury Department filed a lawsuit seeking more than $500,000 in unpaid taxes from Mr. Fakir and his wife. Most of the debt was incurred between 2001 and 2004, shortly before the Fakirs filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
“I’ve had a pretty sad time over the last couple of years,” he said in an interview with The Telegraph. “I’ve overindulged. I’ve gained weight, I’ve made bad investments, I’ve gambled. That’s a lesson I’ve learned.”
“I could have retired 10 years ago, but I don’t want to,” he added. “I thought, ‘What are you going to do? I’m just going to eat and get fat.’ So I kept going. If I feel like I’m slipping, I’ll stop. Most people can’t wait to retire, but I have something I love to do. It’s not like a job.”
Instead, he told The Associated Press a few years later, it was more of a calling: “The Four Tops, we spread love.”