Fans of any '60s icon share a similar gripe: the legacy of too many great artists is inextricably tied to too few of their songs in heavy rotation on oldies stations. These select tracks get played and played out, and eventually even the lifelong Beatles fan reaches for the dial during the third daily course of "Yellow Submarine." Today, I cued up the Four Tops after reading about the passing of the band's leader, Levi Stubbs, who died in his sleep in his Detroit home at the age of 72, and was reminded about how this predicament is particularly hard on the stable of artists from '60s Motown: The Jackson 5 is relegated to "I'll Be There"; Stevie Wonder, a Motown artist with as deep and wide-ranging catalog of any, is on three times an afternoon with "For Once in My Life." For the Four Tops, the heavy-rotation hits come between 1964's "Baby, I Need Your Loving" and their final Top 10 in 1973, "Ain't No Woman (Like the One I've Got)." Of the handful of stuff between these bookends, some, like The Big Chill-approved "It's the Same Old Song," represent Motown's streamlined mainstream operation. Others, like "Reach Out, I'll Be There," speak to the group's power in the studio. But it's the outlying, oddly successful hit "Bernadette," a tune that is among their most popular and their most enduring, that best demonstrates Stubbs' power as a performer. It's the rare example of a heavy-rotation hit that lives up to its responsibilities.
The quality of "Bernadette" -- a Holland-Dozier-Holland song we've all heard how many times? 1,000? 10,000? -- isn't much like most other candy-ass stuff that Barry Gordy had successfully hocked to white teens through the early part of the '60s. It's scary and hateful. It's desperate. The last Four Tops hit of the decade, the song's central character comes alive in Stubbs' vocal, seething with jealousy and anger, allowing his possessive, hateful anguish to send his voice shredding into the rafters. As he flies off the handle, the other Tops -- Duke Fakir, Obie Benson and Lawrence Payton -- spell out their own deep anxiety in their tortured, wordless counter melody. It churns along to the relentless hammering of the snare drum and piano, increasingly shrill, unyielding, until it meets the ghostly exclamation point (nearly a scream!) of the Andantes, Motown's go-to lady back up singers, at the end of each verse. About two minutes deep, Stubbs' voice cracks while demanding, "Keep on lovin' me!" Then, there's another bizarrely perfect element – a brief moment of silence – before he's back at her throat, standing in the street, screaming her name. "Bernadette" has been playing on repeat since I started writing this, raising the hairs on the back of my neck. 10,000 times later, it'll have the same effect.
Are there countless other examples of Stubbs performing with such iconic, singular intensity? Certainly -- both on other hits ("Reach Out") and the plethora of B-sides and scrapped sessions that only came to light in the last decade. Stubbs' version of the Beatles' "Elenor Rigby" has all the bleak loneliness of the original, but he endows it with a soulful, cocksure strut, as if he's lonely and trying to convince you that he couldn't care less. In this -- the ability to deliver the spirit of these tunes, to own them, to entreat them with "guts and ass," as Bukowski once admired -- is the essence of Levi Stubbs' legacy. And it's one that, in his passing, is not only of a great artist, but also a hero of anyone who's ever stood out in the street, desperate or elated, flushed with passion or rage, looking for their voice.
- Portions of Album Content Provided by All Music Guide © 2008 All Media Guide, LLC.
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