By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 17, 2008; 4:18 PM

Levi Stubbs, 72, the rough-but-soulful lead singer of the Four Tops, which became one of the harmonically dazzling Motown vocal groups of the 1960s with songs such as "Bernadette," "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)" and "Baby I Need Your Loving," died Oct. 17 at his home in Detroit. He had complications from a stroke in 2000.

Few singing groups maintained the quality, popularity and constancy in personnel of the Four Tops, which formed in 1953. They signed with Motown Records a decade later, sold tens of millions of records and generated 19 Top 40 singles from 1964 through the early 1980s.

The original members -- the baritone Mr. Stubbs, first tenor Abdul "Duke" Fakir, second tenor Lawrence Payton and baritone Renaldo "Obie" Benson -- continued to perform together until Payton's death in 1997. Afterward, they sang as "The Tops."

As one of the most formidable groups after the Temptations, another Motown hit machine, the Four Tops were responsible for setting "a high standard for contemporary soul in the mid-Sixties," according to their 1990 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.

The citation singled out Mr. Stubbs for his "bold, dramatic readings" of some of the finest compositions by the Motown songwriting-production team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland.

Popular favorites such as "It's the Same Old Song," "Reach Out, I'll Be There" and "Standing in the Shadows of Love" propelled the band into the front rank of American music for years. Afterward, they scored chart-topping hits with "Ain't No Woman (Like the One I Got)" and "When She Was My Girl."

Critics noted their talent and appeal were undiminished over the years. They made hundreds of concert dates annually, often with the Temptations. A New Yorker reporter attending a Four Tops performance in 1993 wrote its performance was "less of an oldies show than a master class in the golden age of Motor City soul."

Levi Stubbles II was born June 6, 1936, in Detroit, and he was one of eight children born to a foundry worker and a housewife.

In the early 1950s, Levi Stubbs and other local high school students formed their group at a birthday party. Their path into the music business was smoothed by Mr. Stubbs's cousin, singer Jackie Wilson. In addition, one of Mr. Stubbs's brothers, Joe, sang with the Contours and the Falcons.

In selecting a name, the new band shunned the bird-group trend -- Falcons, Orioles, Flamingos -- because, he told The Washington Post, "That sounds great at 14, 15, 16 years old, but at 35, somebody calls you the Cuckoos, it just doesn't work."

As the Four Tops, the group sang in nightclubs, cut several flop records and toured with a revue without any particular notice until Motown founder Berry Gordy Jr. signed them to his subsidiary label Workshop in 1963 for a $400 advance.

By this point, the group's signature harmonies and synchronized dance steps were polished, but the missing ingredient was music and arrangements.

The Holland-Dozier-Holland team, which admired the Four Tops's club act, correctly thought their "Baby I Need Your Loving," would provide the breakthrough. Recording in 1964, the song reached No. 11 on the pop charts.

The Four Tops achieved its first No. 1 hit the next year with "I Can't Help Myself," after which Gordy sent them on a European concert tour. The songwriting team left Motown in 1967 after clashing with Gordy over royalties, but the Four Tops continued to record popular cover versions of other songs, including folk musician Tim Hardin's "If I Were a Carpenter."

The band collaborated on albums with the Supremes and continued its affiliation with Motown until Gordy moved the company to Los Angeles in 1972. The group solidified its post-Motown fame with "Ain't No Woman (Like the One I've Got)," a No. 4 hit in 1973.

Unlike other Motown artists, Mr. Stubbs never spoke bitterly about the company in later years. "Motown just had so many big-time artists there it was virtually impossible to have them all serviced," he told The Post in 1987. "As far as I'm concerned, Motown was the greatest thing that happened to 99 percent of the people that were ever involved with it, simply because it was an outlet that you never would have possibly had otherwise."

Mr. Stubbs last performed in 2000, and Benson died in 2005. Fakir, the only surviving original member, continues to lead a version of the Tops that includes Payton's son Roquel, former Temptations member Theo Peoples and Ronnie McNeir.

In 1960, Mr. Stubbs married dancer Clineice Townsend, who survives him along with five children; three sisters; 11 grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren.

Apart from the Four Tops, Mr. Stubbs played the man-eating plant Audrey II in the 1986 version of "Little Shop of Horrors" and sang "Feed Me (Git It)," "Suppertime" and "Mean Green Mother From Outer Space."

He told People magazine that director Frank Oz gave him the best insight into the role. "He said the plant starts out sorta sweet and kind, then gets sly and devious and mean," Mr. Stubbs said. "I thought about it, some. In the music business you have quite a few people like that, so I put those people in my mind."