Four Tops singing for 44 years with the Four Tops who, unlike many Motown groups, never had a single lineup change until then. At first, Levi Stubbs, Obie Benson, and Duke Fakir toured as a trio called "The Tops". In 1998, they recruited former Temptation Theo Peoples to restore the group to a quartet. By the turn of the century, Stubbs had become ill from cancer; Ronnie McNeir was recruited to fill the Lawrence Payton position and Peoples stepped into Stubbs' shoes as lead singer. Stubbs later died on October 17, 2008 at his home in Detroit. The group also did commercials
George Stubbs included a large segment on Stubbs. In 1959 Mellon and Taylor first met and bonded over their appreciation of Stubbs. This led Mellon to create the Paul Mellon Foundation for British Art (The predecessor of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art) with Taylor as the director. Mellon eventually amassed the largest collection of Stubbs paintings in the world which would become a part of his larger collection of British art that would become the Yale Center for British Art. In 1971, Taylor published the seminal catalogue, "Stubbs". The record price for a Stubbs painting was set by