Celebrity

Abdul ‘Duke’ Fakir, Last Of The Original Four Tops, Is Dead At 88

Published

4 months ago

2024-07-23

Fakir | AP News Image

NEW YORK — Abdul “Duke” Fakir, the last surviving original member of the famed Motown quartet the Four Tops, which was known for singles like “Reach Out, I’ll Be There” and “Standing in the Shadows of Love,” died at the age of 88.

Fakir died of heart failure on Monday at home in Detroit, according to a family representative, surrounded by his wife and other loved ones.

The Four Tops were one of Motown’s most successful and enduring ensembles, peaking in the 1960s. From 1964 to 1967, they had 11 top 20 successes, including two No. 1s: “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)” and the operatic classic “Reach Out, I’ll Be There.” Other songs, frequently about love, agony and grief, were “Baby I Need Your Loving,” “Standing in the Shadows of Love,” “Bernadette,” and “Just Ask the Lonely.”

Many of Motown’s greatest artists, like the Supremes and Stevie Wonder, grew up at Berry Gordy’s Detroit-based corporation, which he created in the late 1950s. However, Fakir, lead singer Levi Stubbs, Renaldo “Obie” Benson, and Lawrence Payton had been together for a decade when Gordy signed them up in 1963 (after the group had turned him down a few years earlier), and they already had a polished stage act and versatile vocal style that allowed them to perform anything from country songs to pop standards like “Paper Doll.”

When they started, they called themselves the Four Aims but soon changed their name to the Four Tops to prevent confusion with the white harmonizing quartet, the Ames Brothers.

The Tops had recorded for several companies, including Chicago’s renowned Chess Records, but needed more commercial success. However, Gordy and A&R man Mickey Stevenson partnered them with the songwriting-production combination of Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Brian Holland, and they soon caught on, combining tight, haunting harmonies (with Fakir as lead tenor) underneath Stubbs’ eager, often frantic baritone.

Abdul ‘Duke’ Fakir, Last Of The Original Four Tops, Is Dead At 88

After Holland-Dozier-Holland departed Motown in 1967, the Tops had more occasional success, with hits including “Still Water (Love),” and a pair of top ten songs for ABC/Dunhill Records in the early 1970s, “Keeper of the Castle” and “Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I’ve Got).” They last entered the top 20 in the early 1980s with the romantic song “When She Was My Girl.”

They remained a prolific concert act, occasionally touring alongside current members of the Temptations, a friendly competition that began when the groups played together at the all-star 1983 television concert commemorating Motown’s 25th anniversary. While the Temptations and other colleagues struggled with drug addiction, internal conflict, and personnel changes, the Four Tops stayed unified and whole until Payton died in 1997. (Benson died in 2005, Stubbs in 2008).

“The things I love most about them — they are very professional, they have fun with what they do, they are very loving, and they have always been gentlemen,” Wonder said of them when he helped induct them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.

Fakir later performed as the Four Tops alongside lead vocalists Alexander Morris, Ronnie McNeir, and Lawrence ‘Roquel’ Payton Jr., Lawrence Payton’s son.

“As each one of them (the original members) passed, a little bit of me left with them,” Fakir told UK Music Reviews in 2021. “When Levi left us, I found myself in a quandary as to what I was going to do from that moment on but after a while I realized that the name together with the legacy that they had left us simply had to carry on, and judging by the audience reaction it soon became pretty evident that I did the right thing and I really do feel good about that.”

In addition to the Rock Hall of Fame, they were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998 and received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009. More recently, Fakir was working on a Broadway musical based on their lives and finished his memoir, “I’ll Be There,” which will be published in 2022.

Fakir has been married twice, the last time to Piper Gibson, and has seven children. (Six people survive him). In the mid-1960s, he was briefly engaged to Mary Wilson of the Supremes.

Abdul ‘Duke’ Fakir, Last Of The Original Four Tops, Is Dead At 88

Fakir, a lifelong Detroit native who remained there even after Gordy relocated the label to Los Angeles in the early 1970s, was of Ethiopian and Bangladeshi heritage and grew up in a violent neighborhood where competing Black and white gangs sometimes clashed. He aspired to be a professional athlete from a young age, but he was also a great vocalist whose tenor caught the attention of his church choir. He was in his teens when he met Stubbs, and the two first performed with Benson and Payton at a birthday celebration hosted by a local “girl” group that Fakir described as “high-class, very fine young ladies.”

“Singing was the by-product of us going to the party looking for the girls!” Fakir stated during a 2016 interview.

“We advised Levi to simply choose a song and sing the lead. We’d back him up. When he started, we all fell in like we had been practicing the song for months! Our combination was fantastic. We were looking at each other as we sang, and then we remarked, “Man, this is a group!” “This is a group!”

SOURCE | AP

Celebrity

Jason Kelce Smashes Football Fan’s Phone

Published

3 weeks ago

2024-11-02

Geoff Brown

Jason Kelce Smashes College Football Fan's Phone

Retired Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce destroyed a Penn State football fan’s phone after the alleged heckler called his brother, Travis Kelce, a fag.

In now-viral footage published on X (previously Twitter) on Saturday, Nov. 2, the retired Philadelphia Eagles great was seen accompanied by football fans outside Beaver Stadium in State College, Pa., for the Penn State-Ohio State game.

As the individual capturing the tape lifted a fist to Jason, 36, and called his name for a fist bump, another man nearby hurled the homophobic slur at the retired Philadelphia Eagles star.

Hey, Kelce. How does it feel that your brother is a queer dating Taylor Swift?” the man questioned, referring to Travis, 34, who has been seeing Swift since 2023. Jason turned around seconds later, snatched the man’s phone, and crushed it to the ground.

“Looked like a Penn State student was getting in Kelce’s face for no reason,” the original X user who submitted the video remarked. “Wild scene in State College.”

“Kelce how does it feel that your brother is a f****t for dating Taylor Swift?”

Jason Kelce proceeded to slam this kids phone on the ground.

Looked like a Penn State student was getting in Kelce’s face for no reason. Wild scene in State College pic.twitter.com/3PEdZXWhSg

— Chives (@jarrett_daveler) November 2, 2024

Additional footage on X shows Jason smashing the phone on asphalt before picking it up and walking away. The phone’s owner, wearing a Penn State hoodie at the time of the incident, was shown in many videos strolling closely behind Jason and recording him before the conflict occurred.

Another footage published on X, which appears to have been filmed after Jason shattered the man’s phone, showed the hooded Penn State supporter trudging through a mob to pick up his phone off the ground.

“Give me my phone, bro,” he seemed to say to Jason.

The NFL alum seized the gadget first, then stood in front of the man and asked, “Who’s the fag now?” Others appeared to interfere.

The incident occurred while Jason was at Beaver Stadium for an appearance on ESPN’s College GameDay. The Ohio State Buckeyes won Saturday’s game 20-13 over the Penn State Nittany Lions.

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Celebrity

Shaun White’s Proposal To Nina Dobrev Was Romantic Gold

Published

3 weeks ago

2024-10-30

Kiara Grace

Shaun White, the Olympic snowboarding champion, already has an impressive medal tally, but his surprise proposal to Nina Dobrev deserves a gold medal.

On Wednesday, the couple announced their engagement on Instagram. Dobrev posted photographs of the two hugging under an arch of white roses and showing off her five-carat Lorraine Schwartz engagement ring.

“RIP boyfriend, hello fiancé,” Dobrev said in the caption.

However, the photographs only tell half the tale, as Shaun devised an elaborate plan to surprise Dobrev with his proposal.

Shaun White’s Proposal To Nina Dobrev Was Romantic Gold

According to a Vogue interview published Wednesday, Shaun said he assembled a team of people from the couple’s inner circle and Vogue personnel to trick Dobrev into thinking she had been invited to an intimate dinner party with Anna Wintour.

White claimed that his publicist emailed Dobrev a forged invitation to the event, which was scheduled to take place at the Golden Swan in New York City.

Dobrev accepted the invitation, joking that Shaun made it “look so legitimate.”

He even asked Dobrev’s stylist to outfit her in Chanel for the event.

Dobrev said she recognized what was happening when she entered the venue and saw White standing beneath the flowery arch.

Shaun’s Proposal To Nina Dobrev Was Romantic Gold

“I went into shock,” Dobrev admitted, later adding that White “said all the right things” before she agreed.

According to the publication, after Shaun proposed, the couple partied into the early morning hours with close friends and relatives.

“Best night of my life,” Shaun captioned his Instagram story on Wednesday.

The duo first became romantically involved in 2020, and they have since publicly recorded their relationship, globe vacations, and White’s Olympic farewell on social media.

SOURCE | CNN

Celebrity

Hollywood Actress Teri Garr Passes Away at 79

Published

3 weeks ago

2024-10-30

Geoff Brown

Hollywood Actress Teri Garr Passes Away at 79

Teri Garr, known for her roles in classics like "Young Frankenstein" and "Tootsie," has passed away at 79.

Hollywood actress Teri Garr, known for her roles in classics like “Young Frankenstein” and “Tootsie,” has passed away at 79. She died Tuesday of multiple sclerosis “surrounded by family and friends,” said publicist Heidi Schaeffer.

Admirers took to social media in her honor, with writer-director Paul Feig calling her “truly one of my comedy heroes. I couldn’t have loved her more” and screenwriter Cinco Paul saying: “Never the star, but always shining. She made everything she was in better.”

Throughout her career, the performer, often known as Terri, Terry, or Terry Ann, seemed destined for show business from a young age.

Her father was Eddie Garr, a well-known vaudeville comic, and her mother was Phyllis Lind, one of the original high-kicking Rockettes at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. Their daughter began dancing classes at six and was performing with the San Francisco and Los Angeles ballet companies by age fourteen.

She was 16 years old when she joined the road crew of “West Side Story” in Los Angeles, and she began starring in small roles in films as early as 1963.

In an interview from 1988, she described how she landed the role in “West Side Story.” After being rejected at her initial audition, she returned the following day dressed differently and was accepted.

Teri Garr, a comedian

Teri Garr then found steady work as a movie dancer, appearing in the chorus of nine Elvis Presley films, including “Viva Las Vegas,” “Roustabout,” and “Clambake.”

She has also appeared on various television shows, including “Star Trek,” “Dr. Kildare,” and “Batman,” and was a featured dancer on the rock ‘n’ roll music show “Shindig,” the rock concert performance “T.A.M.I.,” and a cast member of “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour.”

Her breakthrough role was as Gene Hackman’s girlfriend in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 thriller The Conversation. This led to an interview with Mel Brooks, who offered her the Gene Wilder’s German lab assistant role in Young Frankenstein if she could speak with a German accent.

“Cher had this German woman, Renata, making wigs, so I got the accent from her,” Garr once said.

The film established her as a great comic performer, with New Yorker film writer Pauline Kael calling her “the funniest neurotic dizzy dame on screen.”

Her big smile and off-center appeal helped her land roles in “Oh, God!” with George Burns and John Denver, “Mr. Mom” (as Michael Keaton’s wife), and “Tootsie,” in which she played the girlfriend who loses Dustin Hoffman to Jessica Lange and discovers he has dressed up as a woman to revive his career.

A gift for spontaneous humor

Teri Garr, best known for comedy, has shown in films such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Black Stallion, and The Escape Artist that she can also tackle drama.

She had a gift for spontaneous humor, frequently playing David Letterman’s foil during early guest appearances on N.B.C.’s “Late Night With David Letterman”.

Her appearances grew so frequent, and the pair’s good-natured bickering so convincing that rumors of romantic involvement circulated for a while. Years later, Letterman acknowledged those early appearances with helping the program become a success.

During those years, Garr began to experience “a little beeping or ticking” in her right leg. It started in 1983 and expanded to her right arm, but she thought she could handle it. By 1999, her symptoms had gotten so bad that she saw a doctor and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

After disclosing her diagnosis, Garr became a spokesman for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, giving hilarious remarks at events in the United States and Canada.

Source: AP
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