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Jul 17, 2024 Web Exclusive By Frank Valish

In some of the most exciting reissue news in recent memory, Elemental Music has begun its multi-title campaign to repress both classic and deep cut Motown albums every month into 2025. The label has already issued repressings of The Temptations’ late-‘60s classic Wish It Would Rain and The Supremes’ 1965 album of Sam Cooke covers We Remember Sam Cooke, and as part of its June set of reissues, it is tackling Four Tops’ 1970 album, Still Waters Run Deep.

One of the things that makes Still Waters Run Deep special is that it’s not one of the band’s better-known classics. By 1970, Four Tops’ hit making-est days were behind it. Songwriters Lamond Dozier, Brian Holland, and Eddie Holland (known by music fans as the famed trio Holland-Dozier-Holland), who were so instrumental in Four Tops’ 1960s success and songs like “Reach Out, I’ll Be There,” “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch),” and “It’s the Same Old Song,” had left Motown by late 1967, and as such, acts like Four Tops were left trying to rediscover old magic in new places.

The band released Yesterday’s Dreams in 1968 and Four Tops Now! and Soul Spin in 1969, but none of these albums reclaimed former greatness. Still Waters Run Deep, the first of three Four Tops records released in 1970, one being an album of duets with The Supremes, finally returned the band to the higher reaches of the charts. The song that did so is album opener “Still Water (Love),” co-written by Smokey Robinson. A sweet slice of soul anchored by the familiar baritone of Levi Stubbs, the song reached #11 and reignited the Four Tops’ former magic.

“Reflections,” the only Holland/Dozier/Holland tune on the album, strongly echoes earlier band glories, but the rest of Still Waters Run Deep is the sound of a band moving on. “It’s All In the Game” finds usual lead singer Stubbs taking a back seat and sharing lead vocal duties with Renaldo Benson, Lawrence Payton, and Abdul Fakir, the last of who is the only surviving original member of the band. The band soul-ifies a cover of Fred Neil’s “Everybody’s Talking,” a song best known for Harry Nilsson’s version of the year prior.

The songs on Side B, including “I Wish I Were Your Mirror,” “Elusive Butterfly,” “Bring Me Together,” “L.A. (My Town),” are steeped in classic soul, beautiful melodies, sweeping arrangements, and passionate vocals. By the time the album wraps up with “Still Water (Peace),” a reprise of the album’s opening track with spoken word lyrics that feature an acrostic for the word “peace,” it’s clear that Four Tops is ready to revitalize itself for the ‘70s, without Holland-Dozier-Holland but no worse for it. (www.elemental-music.com)

Author rating: 8/10