#51 The Four Tops- The Four Tops Greatest Hits

The Motown machine motors on…

(Tamla Motown)

Released: August 1967

Producer: Various (mainly Brian Holland & Lamont Dozier)

Topped the chart:

4^th February 1968 (for 1 week)

1 week total

Please note: this is a review of the 16 track Greatest Hits album released in the UK in August 1967, which has a different track listing to the 12 track US version released at the same time.

Tamla Motown’s late arrival to the top of the album chart is surprising looking back, but in many ways it was a sign of just how much the British had taken the soul label to their hearts. Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder would usher in an era of great albums in the 70s, but back in the mid-to-late-60s, they were still the kings of the three-minute pop single and this is where they had dominated on both sides of the Atlantic, songs literally manufactured for success; label boss Berry Gordy would take inspiration from the car plants in Motown’s Detroit home to create a production lines of artists producing material at an astonishing rate.

And while appetite was clearly still high for brief radio-happy blasts on 45, teenagers were more willing to shell out to bring their favourite hits together as part of the democratisation of the LP for younger people. As with any Greatest Hits collection, you have the advantage of all the hits in the same place, but bringing together songs from such a brief period means familiarity can breed minor contempt.

Coming from a label known for its churn—songwriting and production teams would be given a crack at an artists until they stopped having hits, when they would be farmed out to someone else— the fact that the majority of these songs come from the minds of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland is a pleasant anomaly. Labelmates The Supremes might have been the biggest group in America at the time, but The Four Tops’ consistency was remarkable. Lead singer Levi Stubbs might not have been a diva superstar like Diana Ross, but this set of tunes clearly spoke to people.

Their breakthrough hit in the UK was Reach Out I’ll Be There, a number one in October 1966, spending thirteen weeks on the singles chart. Inevitably, it’s the first track on Greatest Hits and it’s a very good place to start. It still sounds unique and there’s a good reason that this is still the group’s signature hit. Given a concrete foundation by Motown’s in-house band The Funk Brothers, the song’s hook is allowed room to just do its thing at the top of the mix, that almost wistful flute blast present from the intro, before Stubbs and the Tops themselves break in with a roar, flute returning to match that steadfast melody into the chorus.

As we’ll see, I’ll Be There is much more laidback than the Tops usual style- Stubbs sitting closer to his baritone range rather than sounding intense and hurt on their other hits, signing slightly above his usual range. It gives the song a certain solidity and dependableness which matches the promise of friendship in the lyrics, but that flute- much like the harmonica on The Beatles’ Love Me Do, brings a chilly, melancholic breeze to the song.

For the most part, what The Four Tops bring to the British charts is a sense of drama. Of course, British music still had its own forms of theatricality, in more of a kitchen-sink, Coronation Street kind of way—She’s Leaving Home and Eleanor Rigby are satisfying little slices of realism, but no one in those songs feel emotions that are fit to burst. Motown and American soul music more generally make falling in or out of love feel like the world falling off its axis—Percy Sledge’s When a Man Loves a Woman wasn’t a number one hit without good reason.

Bernadette is the best example of when that drama comes through clearest for the Four Tops, Stubbs vocals straining at their very top, the song conjures the image of the band standing in the pouring rain shouting up at the poor woman’s window. Equally, 7-Rooms of Gloom is the sound of a lonely man being tortured in purgatory. The lyrics to both are pure melodrama, and Stubbs hits that slight hint of lunacy remarkably well.

Elsewhere, the vocal group behind Stubbs get to show off what they can do. Where Did You Go is strong, backing vocals swelling and breaking like a wave, with a cry acting as the spray- masterfully supported by tasteful piano and strings doing battle for the band’s soul. There are softer, sweeter songs alongside the higher stakes: the backing shifts to more of a coo on Shake Me, Wake Me, while Baby I Need Your Loving sits closer to Smokey Robinson in its tenderness.

However, all other songs and Motown artists should kneel and worship at the altar of I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch), not a huge hit on its debut British release, but more than earning a spot thanks to its gargantuan success in its homeland, where it was the second-biggest selling single of 1965. It features Stubbs at his most pleading, but everything around it just radiates joy thanks to its danceable high tempo and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra enveloping everything with just enough strings.

As with any collection of 60s hits of a Motown artist, there are times when the production-line formula feels dangerously exposed. Their tendency, following a hit, to try and repeat it with something eerily familiar to said hit is plan to hear in several places. A quick glance at the band’s singles discography shows that, yes, Standing in the Shadows of Love and 7-Rooms of Gloom were released in the wake of Reach Out topping the charts. Both tracks feature similar melodies and harmonies, and even attempt to recreate the whistling flute hook from the original track. That’s not to discredit the two latter songs—neither are quite as catchy, but both come roaring in with apocalyptic levels of energy that are more than worth their while on their own.

There are a few songs here, like Sweeter Than Ever and Ask the Lonely which feel like just another Four Tops song rather than anything special, a victim of the seemingly random track listing perhaps? A little more ebb and flow rather than just sticking a bunch of singles together would have worked wonders.

Perhaps The Four Tops aren’t the first Motown band that come to mind today, Reach Out and Sugar Pie continuing to breakthrough on label compilations and

It would be the album-orientated sounds of the 70s for which chin-stroking music academics would salivate over for the decades to come, and so outside of Northern Soul reviews, Motown’s mastery of the 3 minute pop single is forgotten at times. In early 1968, appetite was high for bringing together as many of these as possible, as we’ll see next time…

Score: 7/10

Tracklisting:

SIDE A

1.      Reach Out I’ll Be There

2.      Where Did You Go

3.      I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)

4.      7-Rooms of Gloom

5.      Loving You is Sweeter Than Ever

6.      Standing in the Shadows of Love

7.      Something About You

8.      Baby I Need Your Loving

SIDE B

9.      You Keep Running Away

10.  Shake Me, Wake Me (When It’s Over)

11.  Ask the Lonely

12.  Bernadette

13.  Darling, I Hum Our Song

14.  Without the One You Love (Life’s Not Worthwhile)

15.  It’s the Same Old Song

16.  I’ll Turn to Stone