Singin' the Blues for Mowtown's Obie Benson

Motown singing group Four Tops lost another member Saturday morning. Obie Benson, an original member of the group died of lung cancer that was discovered a few weeks earlier during surgery to amputate one of his legs. The 69-year old also had a heart attack during the procedure.

Benson, whose real name is Renaldo, formed the Four Tops with fellow high school students in 1954, and the foursome performed together for 43 years until Lawrence Payton passed away in 1997 and Levi Stubbs left the group in 2000. During their time together, Four Tops became popular mainly in Las Vegas but Benson is most known for writing the lyrics to "What's Goin on" after a visit to San Francisco. Sitting with a friend in the Haight-Ashbury district, he was stunned when police descended on a crowd of hippies for no apparent reason. So he wrote the song which he later offered to Marvin Gaye.

The group is scheduled to perform at "Motown Royalty" next week, but without one of Motown's kings, the show will be anything but majestic.