important work in color
1964: The Four Tops. 1965: Second Album. 1966: The Four Tops on Top * Four Tops Live! 1967: Four Tops on Broadway * Reach Out * Greatest Hits. 1968: Yesterday’s Dreams. 1969: The Four Tops Now * Soul Spin. 1970: Still Waters Run Deep * Changing Times. 1971: Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 * Magnificent Seven (with the Supremes). 1972: Nature Planned It * Return of the Seven * Dynamite * Best of the Four Tops * Keeper of the Castle. 1973: Main Street People. 1974: Live and In Concert * Anthology. 1975: Night Lights Harmony. 1976: Catfish. 1977: The Show Must Go On. 1978: At the Top. 1981: Tonight. 1982: One More Mountain. 1983: Back Where I Belong. 1984: Indestructible.
Motown supplied great music to AM radio back when rock and roll was considered to be in its lean years. But Motown wasn’t alone as a cultural manifestation. In 1961, Vee Jay had hits with Jimmy Reed, Jerry Butler, Eddie Harris, Gladys Knight and the Pips and Dee Clark. Atco-Atlantic had hits with Ben E. King, Carla Thomas, The Coasters and the Drifters. RCA had Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke and Neil Sedaka. ABC had Ray Charles, The Impressions and Barry Mann. Other artists made the charts in 1961: The Shirelles, Dion, Chubby Checker, The Everly Brothers, Jackie Wilson, Del Shannon, Roy Orbison, Ricky Nelson, Gary U. S. Bonds, Ike and Tina Turner, Dinah Washington, Lee Dorsey, The Crystals and Fats Domino. Vital artists, talented songwriters and, in the case of Phil Spector, innovative producers were represented. Motown’s only big hit in 1961 was the Marvelette’s "Please Mr. Postman." In the following years, as Motown made its presence felt more forcibly at the top of the charts, most notably from a commercial standpoint with the Supremes, the corporation became legendary. Billing itself as "The Sound of Young America" we have an early-sixties example of the commercial manipulation that buries older artists in order to benefit newer artists. As riches increased, Motown’s approach remained the same: the corporation was conservative almost before it had a chance to be innovative. Motown’s ability to make black music enticing to white buyers is enduringly laudable: and incontestable is the social/political importance of a black-owned corporation succeeding on such a grand scale. And for some reason, the usual breach between art and commerce has often been ignored when considering Motown from a critical standpoint. For instance, Motown took The Four Tops – a perfectly interesting band with years of experience behind them – and did what?
Levi Stubbs’ one-track voice was perfectly designed to sing the bland love songs Motown’s one-track corporate mind spewed out endlessly. As the Four Tops’ lead singer, Stubbs pumped up even the worst songs with the kind of melodramatic artifice emulated by bad soul singers ever since. After twenty songs or so, a sob is hard to distinguish from a whine and Levi Stubbs’ vocal styling helped propagate the travesties of Whitney Houston and Michael Bolton. As good as they were, the Four Tops could only mirror the artificiality at the core of the Motown sound; for all their talent, they were victims of a corporation that condescendingly sold self-pity to a nation with a perpetually broken heart.
The Four Tops were one of the most seasoned of acts upon joining Motown, an expertise they would need when Holland-Dozier-Holland, the writing team responsible for the Supremes' and the Four Tops’ best songs, dumped Motown in 1967. The Four Tops were left trying to make hits out of "Walk Away Renee" and "If I Were a Carpenter" – a feat which they pulled off credibly given their harmony vocal skills and the Motown production team’s knowledge of pop orchestral conventions. "Cherish," "Last Train to Clarksville," 'Macarthur Park," "Eleanor Rigby," 'Michelle," "Everybody’s Talking" and "Elusive Butterfly" were the down side of this approach. After 1968’s Reach Out, the Four Tops interest even as marginal pop "artists" was negligible though they maintained a certain amount of craft in almost everything they released, and garnered a hit ("When She Was My Girl") as late as 1981. Second Album and Reach Out are the best of the Four Tops’ collaborations with Holland, Dozier and Holland. The Motown arrangements on many of these songs acquire a gothic darkness and detail, with operatic paranoia, obsessiveness, and grief present in huge orchestrations which push Levi Stubbs' vocals beyond posturing. A mid-career album – Live and In Concert – is a good collection and a good group showcase. Though the Four Tops made less music than many of the other Motown acts, this never resulted in better quality. Other than the exceptions cited above, their career suffered from the Motown ethic. The three-album Anthology is overstatement.
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