Of part-Bangladeshi origin, Abdul ‘Duke’ Fakir, last original member of the Four Tops, dies at 88

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Abdul “Duke” Fakir, whose smooth tenor voice helped propel the Four Tops, the Motown quartet that sang its way to stardom in the 1960s and beyond, died July 22 at his home in Detroit. He was 88 and the group’s last surviving original member.

His daughter Farah Fakir Cook, in a statement sent by a representative, said the cause was congestive heart failure.

The fourth of six children, Abdul Kareem Fakir was born in Detroit on Dec. 26, 1935. His parents divorced when he was about 7, and he was raised mainly by his mother, a piano player from Sparta, Ga., who served as the church choir director and became a minister. His father was a factory worker from present-day Bangladesh, where he had been a street singer and made sitars before making his way west.

Formed while all four members of Four Tops 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, beginning 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.

Fakir provided backing vocals with bandmates Renaldo “Obie” Benson and Lawrence Payton, contributing lush harmonies that came to define the group’s polished, pop-friendly sound. “My voice wasn’t the one out front,” he wrote in the foreword to his 2022 memoir, “I’ll Be There,” “but none of us wanted all the glory. We weren’t the most famous group in the world, but we were famous enough.”

Unlike the Temptations, their slightly more famous labelmates, the Tops remained remarkably stable, sticking 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 were later separated only by death, with each of Fakir’s longtime bandmates dying of cancer between 1997 and 2008.

Fakir and the other Tops began singing together in 1954, with an unrehearsed performance at a graduation party in Detroit. They called themselves the Four Aims, in a nod to their ambitions, but soon re-christened themselves the Four Tops – avoiding confusion with the singing Ames Brothers – and signed with Chess Records in Chicago, kicking off a busy seven-year stretch in which they toured the country in a beaten-down 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 itself. The label’s rigorous artist development program taught them to walk, dress and talk to reporters as though they were music 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’s headquarters establish its reputation as Hitsville U.S.A., putting out 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 Fakir and his fellow singers.

Released in 1966, the tune was in a higher key than Fakir was used to; he said he had to strain to hit his notes in the studio without resorting to falsetto. When Gordy called the group into his office a few weeks later and played the finished track, “we begged him not to release it, to let us go down to the studio to record something else,” Fakir told the Wall Street Journal in 2013.

“To us, the song felt a little odd. Berry took it off and said, ‘I’m going to release it – and you’re going to be surprised.’ ”

The executive was right. Fakir recalled that when he first heard the song while listening to his car radio, he almost broke down in tears.

“I drove to the office and asked to see Berry. His secretary said he was in a meeting. I walked in anyway. He looked up, surprised. I said, ‘Berry, please don’t ever ask us again what we think of our records.’”

The song spent two weeks at No. 1, was covered by singers including Diana Ross and Gloria Gaynor, and was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry in 2022.

“My father paid his dues for the family, and my mother worked very hard. But it was a struggle,” 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, Fakir sang, ran track, played football and basketball, and befriended Stubbs, leading to the formation of the Four Tops.

The group went on to tour in the Jim Crow-era South, where Fakir said he feared for his life when he accidentally walked into the wrong waiting room in a segregated bus station. (A White man put a gun against his head and told Fakir to leave.)

But for the most part he had happy memories of his years at Motown, which he described as “a 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 relocated to Los Angeles two years later, the Four Tops stayed behind in Detroit, signing with ABC/Dunhill and putting out two more Top 10 hits, “Keeper of the Castle” and “Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I’ve Got).” Their last Top 40 single, aptly titled “Indestructible,” was released by Arista in 1988.

That December, the group was slated 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 that became known as the Lockerbie bombing. Fakir and his bandmates missed the flight because they had been called back to the studio for a performance on Britain’s “Top of the Pops” show.

The experience “put a real fine point on the fact that we were here for something we have no control over, and that we should use it to spread the love,” Fakir told the Detroit Free Press much later.

Fakir’s first marriage, to Inez Clinscales, ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife of 50 years, Piper Fakir; their daughter, Farah; two sons from his earlier 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 earlier marriage, Kai Ayne Fakir, died in 2000.

In recent years, Fakir had continued to tour and was also working on a Four Tops musical, trying to capitalize on the popularity of Broadway shows including “Motown” and “Ain’t Too Proud,” about the Temptations. Away from music, he invested in real estate and small businesses, including a wine bar. (“Made a lot of money,” he said, “but I drank too much. So I walked away.”)

In 2023, the Treasury Department filed a complaint seeking more than $500,000 in unpaid taxes from Fakir and his wife. Most of the debt was incurred between 2001 and 2004, shortly before the Fakirs filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

“Kind of a sad time for a couple of years,” he said in the Telegraph interview. “I over-everything-ed. I gained weight; I made bad investments; I gambled. It was a lesson I learned.”

“I could’ve retired 10 years ago, but I don’t want to,” he added. “I thought, ‘What are you going to do? I’ll just eat and get fat.’ So I kept going. If I feel myself 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.”