One group that made it big during this time was called "Lenny Griffith & the Fourum," booked to open the nightclub in the new IDS building in downtown Minneapolis. "The Fourum" featured lead singer and front man Lenny Griffith, who had a terrific voice and a sometimes entertaining collection of off-color one-liners and bawdy bar songs (many of which became very popular with many "Dueling Pianos" performers some thirty years later).
During their engagement at the IDS nightclub, their keyboardist quit and they hired Bob Burtis to take his place, playing the Hammond M-3 organ, trumpet, and singing an occasional vocal or two.
The demise of soul music as a commercial art form had left Bob virtually unemployable and wandering aimlessly in search of a new musical direction. He had found that new direction, and it would soon lead him to the Holiday Inn in Panama City, Florida, as well as hotel and motel lounges across the country for many years to come. Musicologists at the University of Minnesota have also determined that this was where he first developed an unnatural obsession with jumpsuits, ruffled shirts, sport coats, and loud shirts featuring colors and shapes not normally found in nature.
