Battle of the Motown Groups: THE FOUR TOPS or THE TEMPTATIONS?

Gotta go Temptations.

Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, too.

Edit: forced to abstain!

They had consistant sound and class. The Tempts were for watching, The Tops for listening. IMHO, the best of all Motown groups.

Levi Stubbs is one of the finest singers this country has ever produced. Nothing the Temps ever did (and don't get me wrong, I dig 'em) ever came within shouting distance of "Reach Out," "Standing in the Shadows of Love," or (most of all) "Bernadette."

Take those three out, and it's close. Tops were still better, but it's close. WITH those three? No contest.

The Four Tops made the vast majority of their best records from 1964-67, when Motown's legendary production triumvirate, Holland-Dozier-Holland, was at the helm. Unfortunately, after H-D-H left Motown in '67, the Tops were one of the acts who suffered. Not only did they have no further top ten hits for Motown, but a lot of the songs that H-D-H's successors chose for them were serious mismatches of artist and material. Ever heard the Four Tops' versions of stuff like "Walk Away Renee," "Climb Ev'ry Mountain," "If I Were A Carpenter," and "MacArthur Park?" If not, you're lucky!

The only way for the Tops to (almost) recapture the magic of their first three years at Motown was to change labels. They moved to Dunhill in 1972 and were immediately rewarded with "Keeper of the Castle," their first top ten hit in more than five years, followed by the even bigger hit, "Ain't No Woman (Like The One I Got)."

The Temptations, meanwhile, weathered H-D-H's departure from Motown far better. The label hooked them up with producer Norman Whitfield, who crafted such classics for the group as "Cloud Nine," "I Can't Get Next To You," "Psychedelic Shack," "Just My Imagination," "Papa Was A Rollin' Stone," and "Masterpiece."

So to summarize: the Temptations consistently came out with excellent recordings for a decade-plus (1963-circa 1974), while far too much of what the Tops did from 1968-72 just wasn't that great. Granted, there were exceptions--like "Still Water (Love)"--but exceptions are all they were.

And that's why I voted for the Tempts. Still a tough choice, though!

they're getting whipped bad in the poll, and that just isn't right. :evilgrin:

Whoever wins, it ought to be a close battle.

Levi Stubbs truly is one of the great vocalists of the past 40 or so years.

FWIW, when I created a rank-ordered list of my favorite '60s soul records, the Four Tops first came in at #9, while the Temptations didn't make their initial appearance until #11.

they're both great and I personally prefer the Temptations; however, The Four Tops deserve more respect. B-)

Just my Imagination is one of the best songs ever and so is Papa was a Rollin Stone

The two songs you mention are so great,but then I think of "Just ask the Lonely" by the Tops (one of my favorites songs ever).and others.

It seems The Temtations had a larger number of hits maybe.

To me though I think my favorite group, The Chi-lites are often over-looked. Such beautiful music, wonderful voices and such passion in their songs.

bernadette!

The Tops had some of the best harmonies, ever. The Temptations...not so much. They were for watching, not listening to. Besides, the Tops never did Ball Of Confusion... :puke:

Both of them can make me late for work because I sit in the parking lot singing to the very end of one of their songs on the radio. Would it be, I don't know, racist of me to ask why groups like them fell out of favor? Would not such music be popular today ? I mean, really, they were SO FREAKING GOOD.

First, it certainly would NOT be racist of you to ask such a question!

Second, the answer is that a synergy (for lack of a better word) of factors occurred during the 1970s and into the '80s, which sounded the death knell for what I call "real soul." Those factors included (but were not limited to):

The rise of such styles as disco and funk, which moved the emphasis in R&B from the emotion express by the singer(s) over to the dance beat, where it sadly remains to this day.

Also, in the middle 1970s, Columbia Records commissioned a study to find out how it could gain a foothold in African-American music. While the results of that study produced *some* positive results (such as Columbia's bankrolling Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff's Philadelphia International label), it also led to the major labels eventually overshadowing the upstart independents that had been the backbone of soul music and its predecessors, doo-wop and R&B. And whenever the corporations take over something creative, the first thing they toss out the window is the creativity!

Toward the end of the '70s, radio began to shift its focus from broadcasting to "narrowcasting," which meant that you no longer would hear, say, James Brown on the same Top 40 stations that played Helen Reddy or Aerosmith. Before the late 1970s, Top 40 stations played whatever happened to be on the charts at a given time, which meant greater exposure to mainstream whites (i.e., the people with the most disposable income) not only of black music, but also of such genres as country and MOR (middle of the road). But as the '70s gave way to the '80s, the only R&B or country music you'd hear on Top 40 radio was the lighter, softer variety--or, in the case of R&B, something with a hardcore beat.

To give you an idea of how severely the above reasons (and others I haven't covered) affected R&B: In 1967, the average #1 soul hit peaked at #9 on the pop charts. By 1979, the average had dropped to #22.

For an excellent overview of what I outlined in this message, I highly recommend Nelson George's book, THE DEATH OF RHYTHM AND BLUES.

I lived through all those times. My dad had hundreds of 45s, mostly country but some good stuff - Beatles and Stones, and Otis Redding and the Stylistics (I saw them on PBS a couple nights ago - does Russell EVER AGE??? And he sounded BEAUTIFUL).

I was living in Madison Wisconsin when Otis' plane crashed in a lake there - I was ten and I remember asking my dad why he was only playing Otis one night in December - he said Otis had died and was quite bereaved. My dad has been gone a long time now and to this day the sound of Otis always makes me want to blubber. *sniff*

I miss that great music. Do you think it could ever make a comeback?

It features the classic soul rhythms of the '60s and '70s twenty-four hours a day:

http://www.live365.com/stations/soulexpressradio

:thumbsup:

"Papa was a rolling stone..."

"You can be what you want to be
on Cloud Nine"

The Four Tops or The Temptations.

Or, being the operative word. One or the other, but not both.