{"id":1391,"date":"2008-10-19T06:23:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-19T14:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/archives\/2008\/10\/19\/levi-stubbs\/"},"modified":"2008-10-19T06:27:02","modified_gmt":"2008-10-19T14:27:02","slug":"levi-stubbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2008\/10\/19\/levi-stubbs\/","title":{"rendered":"Levi Stubbs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hey, did you see that Levi Stubbs died?<\/p>\n<p>It took me a while to get into Motown.\u00c2\u00a0 I think &quot;Bernadette&quot; clinched the deal.\u00c2\u00a0 Or maybe it was &quot;Reach Out (I&#8217;ll Be There)&quot;.\u00c2\u00a0 I remember driving to Becket, Massachusetts with the Resnicks to pick up Doug from summer camp.\u00c2\u00a0 I heard that Four Tops song twice on the way up and a few times on the way back.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 It closed me.\u00c2\u00a0 Because of the power.\u00c2\u00a0 Of Levi Stubbs&#8217; voice.<\/p>\n<p>Sometime in the future these old acts are gonna pass away.\u00c2\u00a0 Stunningly, that time is now.\u00c2\u00a0 Levi was 72.\u00c2\u00a0 Even Ringo Starr is 68.\u00c2\u00a0 We thought they were going to live forever.\u00c2\u00a0 But even we got gray and lost our hair, and have slowed down.\u00c2\u00a0 A younger generation has taken over for us, but kids still listen to our music.<\/p>\n<p>It wasn&#8217;t only one man who was responsible for the Four Tops&#8217; success.\u00c2\u00a0 There were writers and producers, but without Levi Stubbs, the records wouldn&#8217;t have been elevens, they wouldn&#8217;t sound so pristine, wouldn&#8217;t evoke a time and a place, whether it be that drive or that bar mitzvah party or just spinning records alone, in your basement, dreaming of a better life to come.<\/p>\n<p>It saddens me when these performers die.\u00c2\u00a0 It&#8217;s like a candle has been snuffed, there&#8217;s a little less light in the world.\u00c2\u00a0 But when I hear their music I know that they&#8217;ll live on in hearts and minds for generations, because they were just that good.<\/p>\n<p>Will we ever revisit an era where acts as diverse as Louis Armstrong, the Four Tops and the Beatles can coexist on the airwaves, the music of all emanating from the same station, so dominant that everyone knows the licks?\u00c2\u00a0 I don&#8217;t think so. That&#8217;s a bygone era.\u00c2\u00a0 We don&#8217;t even have a new &quot;Bonanza&quot;, and there are many more records than TV shows.<\/p>\n<p>So raise a glass to the golden era.\u00c2\u00a0 We lost another soldier in the music wars.\u00c2\u00a0 One who gave his all, just so your life could be a little bit better.<\/p>\n<p>Levi Stubbs?\u00c2\u00a0 I can&#8217;t help myself for loving you and your music.\u00c2\u00a0 Wherever you are right now, I hope you know that!<\/p>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hey, did you see that Levi Stubbs died? It took me a while to get into Motown.\u00c2\u00a0 I think &quot;Bernadette&quot; clinched the deal.\u00c2\u00a0 Or maybe it was &quot;Reach Out (I&#8217;ll Be There)&quot;.\u00c2\u00a0 I remember driving to Becket, Massachusetts with the Resnicks to pick up Doug from summer camp.\u00c2\u00a0 I heard that Four Tops song twice [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-mr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}