Lawrence Albert Payton (March 2, 1938 – June 20, 1997) was an American

tenor A tenor is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. The tenor's vocal range extends up to C5. The low extreme for tenors is wide ...

songwriter A songwriter is a musician who professionally composes musical compositions or writes lyrics for songs, or both. The writer of the music for a song can be called a composer, although this term tends to be used mainly in the classical music ...

, vocal arranger, musician, and

record producer A record producer is a recording project's creative and technical leader, commanding studio time and coaching artists, and in popular genres typically creates the song's very sound and structure. Virgil Moorefield"Introduction" ''The Producer as ...

for the popular Motown quartet, the Four Tops. In 1997, at 59 years old, Payton died of liver cancer.

Biography

Payton and Renaldo Benson both attended a Northern High School in Detroit and met

Levi Stubbs Levi Stubbs (born Levi Stubbles, June 6, 1936 – October 17, 2008) was an American baritone singer, best known as the lead vocalist of the R&B group the Four Tops, who released a variety of Motown hit records during the 1960s and 1970s. He h ...

and

Abdul Fakir Abdul Kareem Fakir (born December 26, 1935), professionally known as Duke Fakir, is an American singer. He is a founding member of the Motown quartet the Four Tops, from 1953 to the present day. A first tenor, Fakir is the group's lone surviving ...

at a school birthday party. The four teenagers began singing in 1953 as The Four Aims but later changed their name to the Four Tops. Although successful in the local area as a performance group, recording success eluded them until signing with the newly established Motown label in 1963. They then became one of the biggest recording acts of the sixties, charting more than two dozen hits through to the early eighties. Payton is credited for the vocal arrangements and the "smooth seamless harmony" of the Tops' sound. He also sang lead on several songs such as "Feel Free" (from the ''Catfish'' album) and "Until You Love Someone" (from their Motown days) but he was often overshadowed by the more popular

. Stubbs praised Payton's contribution saying, "He did everything music wise, he had a terrific ear, he was a terrific guy, perfect pitch, he just knew what he was doing, he was a genius." The original Four Tops enjoyed continued success as a headline performance act and remained together for 43 years until Payton's death in 1997, aged 59, from liver cancer in

Southfield, Michigan Southfield is a city in Oakland County in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 76,618. As a northern suburb of Detroit, Southfield shares part of its southern border with Detroit. The city was original ...

. He was interred in Woodlawn Cemetery. Payton had 11 children. One of his sons, Roquel, went on to sing with the Four Tops who still enjoy popularity today as an in-demand performance group, and still featuring Abdul Fakir. Payton, as a member of the Four Tops, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1997, was inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame 1999, the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998, received the Grammy Life Achievement Award in 2009, and was included in the Billboard Magazine Top 100 Recording Artists of All Time.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Payton, Lawrence 1938 births 1997 deaths American soul musicians Four Tops members American tenors Deaths from liver cancer Deaths from cancer in Michigan Burials at Woodlawn Cemetery (Detroit) Singers from Detroit 20th-century African-American male singers