By Cynthia Charlene Greason
FROM WIKIPEDIA COMMONS
Abdul Kareem “Duke” Fakir (December 26, 1935 – July 22, 2024) was an American singer. He was a founding member of the Motown quartet the Four Tops, from 1953 until shortly before his death.
Fakir died of heart failure at his Detroit home on July 22, 2024, at the age of 88.
The other members of the Four Tops were Levi Stubbs , Lawrence Payton and Renaldo “Obie” Benson.
They originally gave themselves the name “The Four Aims”, to describe their goals of achieving something great. But at their first recording session with Chess Records in Chicago, they were reminded that the singing quartet, the Ames Brothers, was a very popular group, and it was suggested that they change their name to avoid confusion. After some discussion, their musical director Maurice King suggested the name the Four Tops, to go along with their original goal of shooting for the stars and reaching the top.
They became a popular local performing group but recording success eluded them until they signed with the newly established Motown Records in 1963. They soon became one of the biggest recording groups of the 1960s, with 14 charted hits through the early 1980s. They are listed at number 77 in Billboard magazine “Top 100 Artists Of All Time”. Fakir was a guest on the “Not My Job” segment of the NPR radio show Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me broadcast on January 21, 2012.[5] In 2022, Fakir was featured in an Associated Press Q&A article and video in which he discusses his memoir called I’ll Be There: My Life With The Four Tops, and musical based on his life and the story of The Four Tops.
Following the deaths of the other three Tops by 2008, Fakir controlled the Four Tops intellectual properties and was responsible for assembling the touring version of the band that would carry on the group’s legacy. He had stated an intention never to retire and indeed continued to tour with the group until less than a month before his death. Shortly before his death, he named Michael Brock as his successor.
