The Temptations - The Four Tops

Motown icons The Temptations and The Four Tops co-headline the Paramount Theatre in Oakland on Saturday, November 16.

For more than fifty years, The Temptations have prospered, propelling popular music with a series of smash hits, and sold-out performances throughout the world. Hits such as “My Girl,” “It’s Growing,” “Since I Lost My Baby,” “Get Ready,” “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,” “Beauty Is only Skin Deep,” and “I Wish It Would Rain,” among many more.

In addition to winning multiple Grammy awards, The Temptations won an Emmy in 1998 for the NBC mini-series that chronicled the group’s history and was a prime time triumph.  The band’s current line up consists of Otis Williams, Ron Tyson, Terry Weeks, Larry Braggs, and Willie Greene Jr.

The Four Tops first Motown hit was “Baby I Need Your Loving” in 1964, which made them stars and their sixties track record on the label indispensable to any retrospective of the decade. Their songs, soulful and bittersweet, were across-the-board successes. “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch),” a no. 1 R&B and Pop smash in 1965, is one of Motown’s longest-running chart toppers; a longtime favorite quickly followed it, “It’s The Same Old Song” (no. 2 R&B/no. 5 pop). A romantic trilogy highlighted their commercial peak: the no. 1 “Reach Out I’ll Be There,” “Standing In The Shadows Of Love” (no. 2 R&B/no. 6 pop) and “Bernadette” (no. 3 R&B/no. 4 pop)—an extraordinary run of instant H-D-H classics. Other Tops hits from the decade included “Ask The Lonely,” “Shake Me, Wake Me (When It’s Over),” “Something About You,” “You Keep Running Away,” “7-Rooms Of Gloom” and their covers of “Walk Away Renee” and “If I Were A Carpenter.” The quartet was also extraordinarily popular in the U.K.

In 1990, with 24 Top 40 pop hits to their credit, the Four Tops were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. Though they would no longer have hits on record, the group continues to be a hit in concert, touring incessantly, a towering testament to the enduring legacy of the Motown Sound they helped shape and define.