WWTBAM Bored

Lead singer for many years with the Four Tops. With Stubbs' death, only one of the original Tops remains alive. Stubbs also was the voice of Audrey the carnivorous plant in Little Shop of Horrors.

Age 72.

Oh shoot.

Another great singer to be missed.

Over the weekend, at a family get-togther, my cousins and I were talking about how we had seen the Tops perform at Penn's Landing a few years ago.

It was just after the first member of the group had passed. They still kept his spot in the choreography and everything. Good performance. Everyone was up and dancing. They did a lot of their relatively minor stuff, too., which we enjoyed enormously.

My favorite Tops memory is from 1987, in Oakland, at the MLB All-Star Game.

I don't know how it is now, with big-name star players' hosting their own shindigs the night before, but back in the day, MLB had a big party the night before the game (I don't recall the Home Run Derby being the same time, either).

In Oakland, the party ended with fireworks over Lake Merritt.

It started with the reopening of the refurbished historic Fox Theater with a live performance by the Four Tops.

Damn. He was one of the greats. He had a stroke a couple of years ago and had not been able to perform. That was one helluva voice that was silenced.


The power and emotion he wrings out of every line in "Reach Out (I'll Be There)" is something very very VERY few can match and is, for MY money, AT LEAST one of the Top 10 rock vocals of all time.