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SUMMARY:The Temptations & The Four Tops
DESCRIPTION:The Temptations:The Temptations, often referred to as American Music Royalty, are world-renowned superstars of entertainment, revered for their phenomenal catalog of music and prolific career. The group are celebrating their 60th Anniversary through 2022. To mark this milestone, The Temptations released a brand-new album, Temptations 60, with nearly all-original songs in January of 2022 and, are touring in the U.S, as well as abroad to the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands, fall of 2022. Dr. Otis Williams, the sole surviving, original member of The Temptations, turned 80 on October 30th of 2021.Ranked #1 in Billboard magazine’s most recent list of the “Greatest R&B/Hip-Hop Artists of All Time,” The Temptations also appear in the magazine’s 125th Anniversary list of the “125 Greatest of All Time Artists.” In addition, Rolling Stone magazine named the group among the “100 Greatest Artists of All Time.” In September of 2020, the editors of Rolling Stone magazine commented that The Temptations are “Indisputably the greatest black vocal group of the Modern Era…,” and listed the group’s Anthology album among the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time.” The Anthology album has appeared in all three of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums’ lists.The Temptations’ heritage, influence and contributions to, not only American culture and African American communities but also to the global music landscape are monumental. The influence that The Temptations had on mainstream and global artists, such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and others, is undeniable.The group’s popularity is ever-increasing and they are one of the most iconic, bestselling brands in the entertainment world today. While the group has evolved over the years, Dr. Otis Williams has continued to lead the group and carry the torch forward for the next generation of Temptations’ fans.The Four Tops:The quartet, originally called the Four Aims, made their first single for Chess in1956, and spent seven years on the road and in nightclubs, singing pop, blues,Broadway, but mostly jazz—four-part harmony jazz. When Motown’s Berry GordyJr. found out they had hustled a national “Tonight Show” appearance, he signedthem without an audition to be the marquee act for the company’s WorkshopJazz label. That proved short-lived, and Stubbs’ powerhouse baritone lead andthe exquisite harmonies of Fakir, Benson, and Payton started making one smashafter another with the writing-producing trio Holland-Dozier-Holland.Their first Motown hit, “Baby I Need Your Loving” in 1964, made them stars andtheir sixties track record on the label is indispensable to any retrospective of thedecade. Their songs, soulful and bittersweet, were across-the-board successes.“I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch),” a no. 1 R&B and Pop smash in1965, is one of Motown’s longest-running chart toppers; it was quickly followedby a longtime favorite, “It’s The Same Old Song” (no. 2 R&B/no. 5 pop). Theircommercial peak was highlighted by a romantic trilogy: the no. 1 “Reach Out I’llBe There,” “Standing In The Shadows Of Love” (no. 2 R&B/no. 6 pop) and“Bernadette” (no. 3 R&B/no. 4 pop)—an extraordinary run of instant H-D-Hclassics. Other Tops hits from the decade included “Ask The Lonely,” “Shake Me,Wake Me (When It’s Over),” “Something About You,” “You Keep Running Away,”“7-Rooms Of Gloom” and their covers of “Walk Away Renee” and “If I Were ACarpenter.” The group was also extraordinarily popular in the U.K.After H-D-H split from Motown, producer Frank Wilson supervised the R&B Top10 hits “It’s All In The Game” and “Still Water (Love)” at the start of the seventies.The Tops also teamed with Motown’s top girl group, the Supremes, post-DianaRoss. Billing themselves The Magnificent Seven for a series of albums, they hitwith a cover of “River Deep - Mountain High.”When Motown left Detroit in 1972 to move to Los Angeles, the steadfast Topsdecided to stay at home, and with another label. They kept up a string of hits withABC-Dunhill for the next few years: “Ain’t No Woman (Like The One I’ve Got),” aTop 5 hit; the Top 10 “Keeper Of The Castle”; and the R&B Top 10’s “Are YouMan Enough (from the movie Shaft In Africa),” “Sweet Understanding Love,”“One Chain Don’t Make No Prison” (later covered by Santana), “Midnight Flower”and the disco perennial “Catfish.”In 1980 the group moved to Casablanca Records. The following year they wereat no. 1 again, with “When She Was My Girl,” making them one of the few groupsto have hits in three consecutive decades. They also scored R&B Top 40s withthe ballads “Tonight I’m Gonna Love You All Over” and “I Believe In You AndMe,” the original version of the 1996 Whitney Houston smash. And the Topswere heard in the film Grease 2 with “Back To School Again.” By 1983, riding thewave of the company’s 25th anniversary celebration, the Tops were back withMotown and H-D-H. The reunion resulted in the R&B Top 40 hits “I Just Can’tWalk Away” and “Sexy Ways.” They signed with Arista later in the decade, and there they racked up their finalsolo Top 40 hit, “Indestructible,” which was the theme of the 1988 SummerOlympics. That year they also partnered with Aretha Franklin, a longtime friendfrom Detroit, for the Top 40 R&B “If Ever A Love There Was.” During this period,Stubbs stepped out and gained notoriety for voicing the man-eating plant AudreyII in the film musical Little Shop Of Horrors, for which he sang the cult classic“Mean Green Mother From Outer Space.”In 1990, with 24 Top 40 pop hits to their credit, the Four Tops were inducted intothe Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. Though they would no longer have hits on record,the group continued to be a hit in concert, touring incessantly, a toweringtestament to the enduring legacy of the Motown Sound they helped shape anddefine. Following Payton’s death in 1997, the group briefly worked as a trio untilTheo Peoples, a former Temptation, was recruited to restore the group to aquartet. When Stubbs subsequently grew ill, Peoples became the lead singerand former Motown artist-producer Ronnie McNeir was enlisted to fill Payton’sspot. In 2005, when Benson died, Payton’s son Roquel replaced him.For Rolling Stone’s 2004 article “The Immortals – The Greatest Artists Of AllTime,” Smokey Robinson remembered: “They were the best in my neighborhoodin Detroit when I was growing up (and) the Four Tops will always be one of thebiggest and the best groups ever. Their music is forever." 
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