Bob & the Beachcombers - The Midwest's Most Popular Surfin' Sixties Rock & Roll Family Show - The Rock & Roll Museum of History

The Hotel Lounge Era

The end of the sixties decade was marked by the decline in the popularity of soul music and rhythm and blues. Top artists of the 1969 included The Supremes, the Temptations, James Brown and Sly & the Family Stone. In 1970 the top 20 artists for the year featured the Carpenters, Bobby Sherman, Glen Campbell and Tom Jones, while Wilson Picket had left behind "Funky Broadway" for an embarrassing remake of the Archies "Sugar, Sugar". If you were a professional musician and wanted to work, you got your hair styled, picked up a couple of jump suits and ruffled shirts, bought a Shure Vocal Master PA system and a Hammond M1 and began playing hotel lounges and nightclubs.

1970 - 1971
Bumble

Bob made that transition with help from former Caretaker, Lauren McArthur, who had formed a trio and began performing at small nightclubs, resorts and bowling alleys around the Midwest. They called themselves "Bumble", with Jim "Kozy" Kozan on the Hammond B3 playing keyboards and kicking pedals and Lauren on the drums, Bob Burtis played piano, and later hired Andy Loveless to take over on drums, when Lauren switched to guitar.

This popular quartet was a regular attraction at the world reknowned "C.C. Tap" in south Minneapolis and made many trips in their orange band school bus to Bemidji for shows at several northern Minnesota hotels and resorts.

1971-1972
Lenny Griffith & the Fourum

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.

During their engagement at the IDS nightclub, their keyboardist quit and they hired Bob Burtis to take his place, playing the Hammond organ, trumpet, and singing an ocassional vocal or two. The demise of soul music as a commercial art form had left Bob unemployed and wandering aimlessly in search of a new musical direction. He had found that new direction, and it would lead him to the Holiday Inn near Panama City, Florida, as well as hotel and motel lounges across the country for many years to come.

1972-1973
Skyline

After a few months at the Holiday Inn the band realized that what audiences there really wanted was not a front man who repeated off-color lymerics or introduced songs by saying, "This next one is called 'She was only the fisherman's daughter, but when she saw his rod, she reeled'. What these lonely traveling salesman and divorced or philandering middle-aged men were really looking for was a good-looking chick singer.

So they uncerimoniously dumped the lead singer, replaced him with a talented female vocalist and renamed the band as "Skyline", featuring Al Perkins on bass, Ron Pekrul on drums, Gail Hensley on vocals, and Bob Burtis on keyboards and vocals. It was around this time that Bob passed through a difficult and troubling phase in his musical career during which he developed a strange affinity for leisure suits in pastel colors while wearing a pageboy hairstyle, much like that of Richard Carpenter.

It was a difficult period for many musicians and performers, when Holiday Inns and Steak & Ale restaurants became popular hangouts for young adults, and Barry Manilow was the artist of the day. When Skyline could no longer find work, Bob jettisoned the bass player and drummer and began working with lead vocalist Gail Hensley as a duo around the Twin Cities.

The Bowling Alley Nightclubs

1972 - 1973
Skyline

By this time some of the luster of the lounge lizard lifestyle had lost its sheen, and real rock & roll music was making a comeback, with artists like Three Dog Night, Loggins & Messina, Elton John, Paul McCartney, and Tony Orlando topping the pop music charts of the day

Nightclubs and bowling alley bars were hiring bands that could play the new sounds of the seventies, and the musical doldrums of the "Hotel Lounge Era" ended with the introduction of a new and improved "Skyline", featuring Dick Erickson on bass, Ron Pekrul on drums, Dave Rivall on guitar, and Bob Burtis on keyboards. This band broke out of the lounge scene and hit the rock & roll road once more! Trips to Aberdeen, South Dakota, and a nightclub called "No Dogs Allowed" highlighted this exciting period in Midwest rock & roll history.

The music and styles of the "Back to the 50's" era were also packing 'em in and by 1973, the Whitesidewalls had already been a popular nostalgia band for more than 30 years! Sensing a musical trend, Bob knew that the time was right for a fresh approach to the oldies format. Presenting classic hits and popular music from the 50's, along with creative period costumes and some professional photos shot standing in the urinals at the downtown Minneapolis railway station, Skyline was ready to bring the oldies to the Midwest in a brand new way!

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