Man, that completely sucks. You and the Four Tops were responsible for a lot of all-four-windows-down, hair-blowing-in-the-breeze, singing-songs-at-the-top-of-our-lungs excellent times for me and my friends when we were teenagers.

RIP, Levi, and thank you.

Most of my rites of passage were to the Four Tops. The first concert I ever attended was a Motown revue when the Tops headlined above lightweights like Little Stevie Wonder and some girl group called the Supremes. He had an astounding emotional range to his voice while singing in a quartet. He didn’t break out like Mayfield and Ross, but he was their peer.

21-gun salute to one of Motown’s greatest voices.

I just heard this on the radio the other day: had to let it finish before I got out.

And no, I’m not watching the other video. What a loser Jr is. I ushered a show of his when I was in college and he was just awful. Loud, tuneless, and dumb, and the fans heading out mid-show said it without words.

I like being allowed to hang out in a place where people know and cherish people like Levi Stubbs. All the days of my misspent youth have Levi and his peers in the background. RIP, Mr. Stubbs.

Larry, Levi, Duke and Renaldo !

Nobody like the Four Tops and the greatest lead singer of all the Motown groups (with a small apology to Smokey Bill).

Levi Stubbs was magnificent. but since we are all socialists now, the choice of Billy Bragg’s song off Talking to the Taxman about Poetry is exceptional

Dude,
that was awesome.
I am of an age where The Four Tops were solid gold.
And yet today I thought “Levi who?”
Go in peace Levi.

C

I never knew his name until I heard this by Billy Bragg which was the first thing I thought of when I read the news…

Sort of the same with me – I’d heard him sing, but didn’t ever hear his name until I learned he had voiced “Audrey II” in the 1986 Little Shop of Horrors. Which was the first thing I thought of when I read the news.

RIP, Levi.

The Tops were a key part of my adolescence. In the summer
of 1965, I was sitting in my Aunt Eleanor’s house in Central Islip,
New York. My cousin Kathy’s little transistor was on the table, when
out of it came this astonishing sound–a gruff yet pleading voice
shouting “Sugarpie, Honeybunch, you know that I love you.” There are
moments in your life when everything changes, when you’re stopped in
your tracks and can only respond, “What the hell is that?” That’s the
way I felt when I was walking up the main stairway in the Museum of
Modern Art, turned a corner, and had Guernica slap me in the face, and
it’s what Levi Stubbs did to me and for me that afternoon. It would
not be too much to say that hearing that song turned my world around.

Goodbye, Levi, and thank you,

My favorite Motown group, mostly because of that great voice. Didn’t know the name for a long time, either.