Stubbed

I am saddened by news of the passing of Mr. Levi Stubbs. I was fortunate enough to see him in late 1985 or so, when the Temptations and the Four Tops were together on a package tour in the wake of the Motown 25 TV special. At this point, the band hand been together with the original four members for three decades. I interviewed his fellow Top, Obie Benson, for the University of Michigan student paper and Benson said that once one of them died, they would probably pack it in as a group (the survivors have since changed their minds, in part because the catalog of songs sung by the Tops is too enthralling for audiences to leave behind). At the time, Benson was making a competitive boast. The Tops' tour-mates, the Temptations, had always been a bit of a revolving door. But not the Tops. They were always the same four guys. And they had a lead singer. The band easily could have been Levi Stubbs and the Tops - the set-up would not been much different from Gladys Knight and the Pips or Smokey Robinson and the Miracles -- but Levi Stubbs was, apparently, content to be one of four friends from Detroit who made it big, and the Tops were thus perceived as a quartet in ways that diminished Stubbs' own recognition as one of the greatest singers of his era. Oddly, the most attention I remember Stubbs receiving during my adult lifetime was when he voiced the part of the carnivorous plant Audrey II in "Little Shop of Horrors." He was great as Audrey, but that was Stubbs on a lark. His catalog with (mostly) Motown, offers so many more treasures. Billy Bragg wrote a beautiful tribute to Stubbs - a testament to the power of a truly emotive vocal. This one spiraled out from a shabby home studio in the shadow of downtown Detroit, found Bragg across the Atlantic in Barking or London, and drove Bragg, with his own odd, distinctive, and emotive voice to make more. And that, perhaps, is the highest kind of tribute we can offer one another. Goodnight and thank you, Levi Stubbs.

Billy Bragg - Levi Stubbs' Tears