I’m currently reading the Elvis Costello autobiography and there’s a chapter dedicated to the young Declan’s first faltering steps as a live performer. He describes the folk clubs and pubs who allowed virtually anyone to get up and perform. These days I suppose we’d call them “Open Mic Nights” but back then they weren’t really a feature so much as a way to fill the gaps between the main (ie paid) performers. Sometimes the floor singers were pretty good, often they were terrible, but mostly they were simply dull.
Folk clubs were the natural habit of the floor singer of course and this reminded me of the times I spent at arguably the most famous folk club of them all, Les Cousins.
Come with me now as we travel back in time to a more innocent age….
http://i.imgur.com/6W535qv.jpg
Located beneath a restaurant at 49 Greek Street in the heart of London’s Soho, Les Cousins was tiny and claustrophobic, holding, at a guess, maybe 100 people when full. It was reached by a dark, narrow staircase leading down from the street and in the overhead stairwell were large blow-ups of two significant LP sleeves of the time. These were the famous Bert and John album by Bert Jansch and John Renbourn and the self-titled debut LP by the a cappella folk trio The Young Tradition. Both records were released in 1966 by the Transatlantic label so perhaps there was a promotional deal going on there. At the bottom of the staircase an old man in a trilby and overcoat sat on a stool collecting the entrance fee of a few shillings.
There are various theories as to the origin of the name, the most obvious being Claude Chabrol’s eponymous 1959 film, but I seldom heard anyone use the French pronunciation when speaking of the club, most people preferring “Lez Cuzins” (or “The Cousins”) to the more exotic “Lay Coo-zan”.
Although there had been a club presenting jazz and skiffle at 49 Greek Street as early as 1957, the story goes that Les Cousins opened as a folk club on Friday April 16, 1965, the same day that the self-titled debut Bert Jansch LP was released by Transatlantic Records. If true this is a wonderful piece of synchronicity given that for many years Bert was one of the key performers at the club.
To say that Cousins was an important folk music venue would be a wild understatement. Just about every UK folkie of prominence in the 60s and 70s cut their teeth here and for a while it was the hub of British folk music. Davey Graham, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Roy Harper, John Martyn, Martin Carthy, Donovan, Wiz Jones, Sandy Denny, The Incredible String Band, the Young Tradition and Al Stewart all played the club, while visiting US artists such as Stefan Grossman and Jackson C. Frank also dropped in. Paul Simon played at Cousins during his pre-fame London sabbatical and it’s even rumoured that Dylan dropped in a couple of times, as an observer if not a performer
I was a regular at Cousins for a couple of years from late 1967 through to 1969 mostly attending the famous weekend all-nighters. These were uncomfortable affairs, sitting for hours on the floor without food or drink (Cousins didn’t have a drinks license and most of us couldn’t afford much more than a Coke and a stale sandwich, anyway) before stumbling out blearily into the grey dawn as the Tube began to run again on Sunday morning. Bert Jansch later wrote about this in his song Daybreak from the 1977 album A Rare Conundrum.
It wasn’t all soon-to-be famous folkies and influential guitar players though. There were other hopefuls who played Cousins. These were the floor singers.
Between the big-name acts, or while we were waiting for someone to drag Bert Jansch out of a nearby pub to play his set, the stage was turned over to absolutely anyone who wanted to perform. These amateur floor singers were of varying quality and ability, ranging from excellent, via passable to unbelievably toe-curlingly bad. Blind, misguided confidence is a wonderful thing to behold especially when unfettered by any hint of talent and just like the deluded souls on the early rounds of X-Factor, it’s the really bad ones that were often the most memorable.
One regular Cousins floor singer from circa 1968 resembled a youthful Henry Kissinger. Short of stature with thick, horn-rimmed specs and severe wavy hair worn “Brillo Pad” style in the manner of Bernard Levin, he would accompany himself not with a guitar but a mandolin and a harmonica harness around his neck.
This chap was fond of using an expression I’ve heard nowhere else, either before or since. He referred to his mouth organ as the “blues bellows”. “I’ll need the old blues bellows for this next number” he would say, while rummaging in his duffle bag. He penned his own songs, too. “Here’s one I wrote after my girlfriend left me” he’d impart ominously, before treating us to a mawkish ballad about tearful separations and departing jet planes.
Ironically, it was the “old blues bellows” that proved to be his undoing this particular night. Mid-way though an interminable self-penned tale of woe with countless verses, he launched into the harmonica solo, only to find he’d put the harp in the harness upside down, with the bass notes where the high notes should be and vice versa. Understandably, the ensuing cacophony completely put him off his stride and instead of bluffing his way through, he stopped the song mid-solo and attempted to flip the harmonica over. In doing so he fumbled and dropped it. Almost in slow motion the Echo Super Vamper cart-wheeled from his grasp, bounced off the edge of the stage and into the front row of the audience.
Clearly unfamiliar with the adage “the show must go on” Henry curtailed the performance at that point and shuffled back into the shadows, a broken man.
Another unforgettable floor singer was the girl we nicknamed “Francoise” because of her similarly to the French folk chanteuse Francoise Hardy. Tall and willowy, “Francoise” was strikingly attractive with her tight leather pants (outrageous for the time) and waist-length hair. But although she looked stunning, she unfortunately lacked musical ability of any kind. I only saw her perform once, but it was a memorable occasion. Opening her homemade cover (little more than a piece of curtain fabric sewn into the shape of a guitar bag) she removed the cheapest instrument imaginable. It was one of those terrible no-name plywood guitars which looked like it was made from old orange boxes and sold for maybe £20 in the 60s: steel strings, slot-head tuners, unplayable action an inch off the fretboard etc. To complete the ensemble her guitar “strap” was just a length of satin twine of the type used to tie curtains back.
It didn’t augur well and our worst fears were realised when her opening chord was hopelessly out of tune. “Francoise” stopped playing and without a hint of self-awareness said “Oh, that’s strange. It was in tune when I left home”. She continued to struggle with it for a while, turning the tuners wildly this way and that until an audience member could stand it no longer and jumped up on stage to tune the guitar for her as best he could.
What happened next was even more surreal. Instead of the expected popular folk tune or campfire ballad she stunned everyone by launching into a rocking version of Hard Headed Woman from the 1958 Elvis movie King Creole. Of course it was desperately out of tune both vocally and instrumentally, but even so it lacked nothing in terms of presentation. “Francoise” gave the song everything, including some energetic Elvis-style shape-throwing and hip-swiveling. I can’t remember how it ended, or even if she sang any more songs, but I do recall the stunned silence followed by a smattering of polite applause as she left the stage.
It was the headliners we had come to see however and no one was more influential in the folk world than Davey Graham. Unfortunately Davey’s genius was also tempered by his legendary substance abuse which gave his live performances an air of danger and unpredictability. This eventually all but killed his career and in the 70s it was possible to encounter Britain’s greatest folk blues guitarist busking for small change at Camden Market or hanging out in a squalid Ladbroke Grove squat for example.
But in the late 60s Davey was still a star and regularly headlined Cousins’ infamous all-nighters. I turned up to see him perform one Saturday in 1968 or 69 with the usual high expectations. He was due on stage around 10 or 11 pm but midnight came and went with no sign of him. Eventually, some hours after the scheduled appearance time we heard a commotion at the entrance to the tiny club and the most extraordinary sight greeted the assembled folkies.
The staircase leading down from the street led to a doorway at the left of the stage and the performers had to weave their way through the audience (seated cross-legged on the floor, for the most part) to perform. Suddenly Davey Graham appeared amongst us and very slowly began to pick his way toward the low stage. Always short-haired and smartly dressed, we were surprised to see his trademark crew-cut was, this night, covered by a brightly coloured bandanna. As he came closer the reason for his slow progress became apparent. Davey had a guitar case in one hand and was also leading a small dog – a Jack Russell terrier to be exact – with the other. Once safely on the stage, he tied the dog’s leash to his stool and sat down. Ominously, the guitar case remained firmly shut at this juncture. He then began to address the audience. There followed almost an hour of the most interminable stream-of-consciousness psycho babble imaginable, none of it accompanied by a single note of music. After 30 minutes or so of this blissed-out dissertation, even the dog had nodded off. Being respectful folkies though, the audience were far too polite to give Davey the slow-hand clap, or walk out on him. There may have been a smattering of embarrassed throat-clearing or nervous tittering during some of the more incomprehensible moments (ie most of it), but we remained seated and silent to the bitter end. Mercifully he eventually took out his Gibson J50 and commenced to play some of the most incandescent jazz/blues/folk guitar. It was simply amazing stuff and in retrospect worth every second of the endless stoned rap preamble. At the end, Davey put away his guitar, untied the Jack Russell and together they slowly wound their way through the crowd and out into the grey Soho dawn.
Hi,
Bit late to reply, only just seen this.
I was a regular at cousins, especially all nighters. Saw Arlo Guthrie, Al Stewart, Young Tradition, Jesse Fuller, Stefan Grossman etc etc. Remember one all nighter with John Baldry playing 12 string and probably the best version of Midnight Special I have ever heard. Real magic sitting about 6 foot away. Shame that he did not pay his harp player for the gig!
Another memory was Sandy Denny breaking her A string on her , I believe Gibson, and reaching down at the side of the stage for my Harmony Sovereign, and me getting back my guitar after she had hammered the top with her steel fingerpicks!
More recently in the 90’s I met up with Chris Ayliffe, (sadly now gone from us), and finding out we were at Cousins at the same time., when he did some compering. A real gentleman, we went to a lot of open mike nights in N. Devon. It was nice that Jacqui McShee gave him a mention at the Bert Jansch memorial concert.
Chris Ayliffe was a great luthier, and one met quite a few names visiting him or taking their guitars in for fixing. One was a certain Ralph McTell asking him to strip down the guitar he was given when he opened for the Everly Brothers, and had to have a black Gibson J45/50. I think that Chris refused. He made a beautiful strenghtened guitar for
Jo Ann Kelly to play bottleneck on, but sadly she died before he could give it to her. I pleaded with him to sell it to me, but he refused saying that he would give it to Dave Kelly, I wonder if he ever got round to it.
Anyway sorry for the ramblings.
What a great read! Thank you Mr Concheroo.
No, thank you.
And I just noticed a typo in the opening. That should say “habitat” of course, not “habit”.
I insist. Thank you.
Look, the pleasure is all mine. Now be told. Thank YOU
Great piece, JC. Doesn’t bring back many memories because I only went there a couple of times and have no memory of who was playing. I was more interested in blues at that time. I do remember the enticingly seedy entrance, for all the world as if you were going to the sort of club where they had fake champagne and hostesses. Look what’s happened to it now: http://www.club49soho.com
And there was Bunjie’s too, wasn’t there? Off Charing Cross Rd.
Thanks Mike. I remember Bunjies being on Litchfield Street, off Charing Cross Road as you say, although I never went there much.
Then there was the Troubadour in Earl’s Court, of course.
I frequented the Troubadour during the year I lived in Earls Court in the mid-1970s . Good, cheap food. Frothy coffee. Mostly tedious music. I don’t think I ever saw any “faces” there, because its heyday was pretty much over by then. I do vaguely remember something to do with Happy Traum, although not whether he actually performed or was just said to be “coming in later” to keep the restless punters from shuffling off home. Is it still there?
Seems like the Troubadour is still going
http://troubadour.co.uk/the-club/
Great piece JC. Well before my time of course but wonderfully evocative.
Splendid piece Mr C.
Lovely stuff Johnny. I used to go to a folk club in Brighton in the Mid 80s. Can’t remember the name of the pub, but a few years later it sported a picture of Freddie Mercury on the sign above the door, so perhaps it was the Queen’s Head. At that time there was a tense stand-off between the old folkies and the new, Pogues-and-Bragg inspired arrivals who wanted to play everything three times faster and throw beer around.
When the guitar got passed round, you’d get several versions of Dirty Old Town, some with Ewan MacColl’s phrasing and some with Shane McGowan’s. The resident floor singers would often come in with home-grown songs about obscure historical injustices that required a 10-minute preamble to get the rest of us up to speed. These songs invariably began with a date; In 1649 / To St George’s Hill, except not that one, obviously. One guy did sea shanties, and was careful to explain which town this particular interpretation came from. The next week he’d sing the same tune with a different accent.
The club went from having 10 members to having about a hundred for six weeks, before the traditionalists wrestled back the required mood of sombre contemplation, and the new kids pissed off to form The Levellers.
Nice one chiz. It’s a familiar scenario
Was it the Springfield Hotel? I went there a couple of times in the mid-Seventies, riding my moped from Newhaven. I saw Richard Digance and John Renbourn & Jacqui McShee.
I don’t recall any floor singers, thank God.
yes excellent and such a detailed recollection JC
how are you at finding your car keys these days.
My own wedding anniversary and other people’s birthdays are regularly forgotten Junior
How many of us didn’t have a formative blast in the Folk Clubs, often the only place where a 16 year old could safely snarf a pint or 2. The Lewes Arms Folk Club, upstairs at the pub of the same name was mine. Run by Vic ‘n’ Christine Smith, schoolteachers and folk fanatics both: Vic still writes and reviews regularly in FROOTS. Lewes was and is an amiably hippy boho town, so lots of longhair and beards in the 70s, think the cover of Plain Capers. Probably still now. The club had the usual dire selection of talentless finger-in-the-ear floor singers, but an inspired guest list, so I saw Martin Carthy, John Kirkpatrick and such luminaries for a pittance on several occasions. Already precociously attuned to Fairport, this was heaven for a speccy 4 eyes with short school regulation haircut and an ill fitting Lewes Arms T shirt. Did I sing?
Hell, no.
http://i1353.photobucket.com/albums/q678/Xuxi58/John-Kirkpatrick–Sue-Ha-Plain-Capers-475982_zpsijy7xs8r.jpg
The cover of Plain Capers always reminded me of the denizens of the Lewes Arms…..
Here are few photos taken at Les Cousins in the 60s.
Paul Simon circa 1966. The wagon wheel was a fixture of the club:
http://i.imgur.com/Iuww2h3.jpg
And the ad. from, I think, Melody Maker
http://i.imgur.com/lmIVhCz.jpg
Donovan with his new Gibson J45 in 1966
http://i.imgur.com/JGXwnSV.jpg
Fantastic piece – thanks! It’s odd that dingy stairs to an easily missed entrance seem to have been a feature of so many folk clubs back in the day. Bristol’s Stonehouse (long since lost and built over by an often empty glass and steel monstrosity) had just such an entrance, though it was endowed with a bar, which helped greatly, and the Albert Hole (upstairs folky room at the Albert Inn – har har) was equally easy to miss if you didn’t know it was there. I spent lots of time huddled in both back in the 70s, breathing in second hand smoke and duffle-fumes.
Marvellous. Do you have diaries from the time to prompt the old brain cells? I occasionally refer to mine and often am amazed how little I remember of bands seen in the past, let alone recalling songs they may or may not have performed.
Thanks Beany. If only I’d kept diaries. I can remember a fair amount of things in detail, but much more has been forgotten forever.
Sometimes I can’t recall if I’ve even seen a particular band, for instance
A fantastic read Johnny and a couple of good additions from other contributors. Where I live outside of Wigan there were only a couple of places where troubadours hung out. The outstanding recollection I have is of a folk club that was held upstairs at the local Workingmens Club. This was run by a local poet, Dennis Lyson who worked as a fitter at a local coal mine.
Denis had many fellow folkie/poet friends and he managed to get Roger McGough to do a recital at the back end of the 60`s and an English female folk singer who I think was Bridget St John. That was it.
There are fragments of footage from Les Cousins on YT. One featuring a set by John Martyn that has some photos at the start of a young Al Stewart. This clip purports to be from the Cousins, but there’s probably only one of us who can verify that. Thanks for sharing your incredible memories Johnny
Never a folkie but it did remind me that my local folk club in Westhoughton was the first recipient of the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards club of the year. When I attended a couple of gigs it was usually to accompany a chum who was attending to promote his own events in Leyland.
The venue, by then, was the cosy Westhoughton Golf Club, a couple of miles from my abode. The club was not weekly but held over a set number of less busy months. Regulars would buy a season ticket to cover all events and, unknown to a newbie, would entitle them to a seat instead of having to stand in what available space was left. Woe betide anyone try and place their derriere in someone else’s chosen spot. If looks could kill…
http://www.folkclub.org.uk/
Enjoyed that, thanks. I’m 10/15 years and 400 miles out from being part of that scene but it fascinated me. As does the R&B scene, same time same place. Were you ever at The Flamingo?
Great stuff Conchmeister. Did you ever see Duffy Power at the Cousins?
John McLaughlin played there once with him. Jimi Hendrix, improbably, also played there. I suspect there wasn’t a London club he *didn’t* play.
There are, to my knowledge, only two sources of moving image from the Cousins: the brief clip of Jackson Frank above, plus a slightly longer clip of Al Stewart, from a 1965 BBC doc on a Soho social worker; and this luxuriant Danish (DR) doc ‘Folksangere i London’, from early 1967, wherein we see at Les Cousins John Renbourn performing ‘I Know My Babe’, plus Marc Sullivan (ironically, an American player all but unknown save for this film) performing two pieces. Thankfully, he is far above the level of the floor singers Johnny recalled!
There’s some evocative period film of London in there too.
I think we spoke about Marc Sullivan on the old blog Colin. He had a lovely guitar style, similar to John Renbourn.
I believe he died around 2010.
I only saw the usual suspects at Cousins: Jansch, Renbourn, Roy Harper, John Martyn, Davey Graham etc. I was very guitar focussed in those days and it had to be someone in that folk/blues style to get me to one of the all-nighters.
If you like this thread (I do) you will love this book (I do):
I’ve got a couple of books by that bloke. He’s not bad you know.
Great piece. I was too young to be there but this music forms the core of much of my music collection.
I heard Linda Thompson speak at the Troubabour on a Sandy Denny tribute night and she spoke about something I had always vaguely wondered. The club was named after a French film, which would be pronounced ‘Lay Coo Zan’, but was officially pronounced as a British name, ‘Lez Cuzzins’, but scenes terms would call it Lay Coo Zan as a hip affectation. So that’s that cleared up then.
I really got the wrong end of the stick here. I though it was about a bloke called Les who was a folk singer. Not having any of his records, I took a whole to getting round to reading it.
And what a fabulous piece of writing it was. Made my weekend. I was laughing out loud: to the bafflement of Mrs KFD. You capture the atmosphere so well and reminded me of the langeurs of gig going. For every evening that a Jansch turns up, one probably has to endure ten with Francoise and her ilk.
You’ve really thrown the gauntlet down good and proper to any other would be scribblers here. Try and write something better than that!
In your neck of of the woods it’d be Francoise and her elk, I’m guessing… 🙂
Thanks KFD, Colin and everyone else, you’re too kind.
Here’s an audio clip (28 mins) of John Martyn at Les Cousins in the 60s with some black & white footage dubbed on. At the very start you can see the picture of The Young Tradition in the overhead stairwell I mention in the piece. It gets a bit repetitive as the same few mins of footage are repeated again and again, but you get the picture. It gives a fair idea what Cousins was like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG2b-AsNMUU
Lovely atmospheric piece, JC. The Troubadour is probably more popular than ever, but as an eaterie and deli. I used to have a regular Sunday brunch and the occasional coffee there up till I left London. IIRC, they claim Dylan played there in the very early ’60s, probably when he was doing that BBC play which some BBC exec had wiped several years later in their usual act of erasing a culture that they had no regard for.
Have been listening to Jansch and, particularly, the marvellous Davy Graham much more in the last few years, partly because I was looking for suitable material for the restaurant playlist. Annoyed I never saw them live, though I may have seen Davy busking at Camden without realising it.
Any chance of a UFO piece in the wake of the Psychedelic Britannia documentary tonight?
Cheers Ian. I only went to the UFO a couple of times and I tend to get the memories mixed up with the Middle Earth in Covent Garden which was a similar type of club.
I do have memories of the Saville Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue though. They were a regular Sunday night event in 1967/68.
Perhaps the “youngsters today” (ie those under fifty) find the whole business of folk clubs a little strange. In Coventry, late sixties, early seventies, there were quite a few, mostly in upstairs pub rooms (“function” rooms), maybe three of four evenings a week. The proportion of actual Arran-sweatered-finger-in-ear-Rambling-Sid-Rumpole folk music was small enough to be ignorable. Folk clubs were where guitar players/singers used to hang out, performing their own songs. There would always be a few trad.arrs. in the mix, and at least one virtuosic rip through Anji (however you spelled it), but it was only “folk” in the sense that it was played by us folk.
We had some great guests do the rounds, too, to show the locals how it was done. Pentangle members, Dave Swarbrick, the much-loved Dando Shaft … but it was the regular local “stars” we went to see, rolling up exotic cheroots in licorice paper and making a half pint last all night. And their music was absolutely non-folk, just contemporary songwriting. We all wanted a big Harmony Sovereign, because it was big. There were so many guitarists back then; it seemed we were forever hauling our “boxes” (no sniggering please) round to clubs and mates’ houses, learning new finger-picking patterns. So much skill.
Kids today? Cuh.
Harmony Sovereigns. They were American-made and looked the part but, as I recall, much more affordable than the outrageously expensive Gibson and Martin guitars (the latter were seldom seen in the UK back then, anyway).
here’s the Big Head of the Big Harmony Sovereign – a thing of beauty in itself.
http://i1318.photobucket.com/albums/t642/burtkocain/1971_Harmony_Sovereign_Model_H164_1189H164_head_zpskgck77qm.jpg
Here’s another clip some may be familiar with, of the Watersons and Anne Briggs. At the end, they are playing at a provincial pub and I imagine this was the kind of scene into which Bob Dylan stepped in the 60s when, legend has it, he appeared with Martin Carthy at The King & Queen pub in London’s west end
Great stuff. That was filmed in Hull.
Interesting to see Norma as a young woman, looking very much like Eliza did when she started out.
This song killed Open Mics for ever for me.
Love it.
JC – I have an excellent boot of a Jimi concert at The Saville where he plays Sgt Peppers LHCB just days after its release.
As for folk clubs, they had one every Monday night during the early ’70s in a large local hotel. There were a fair few singer/songwiter/guitar players on tour then. Billy Connolly played one time and received his largest ovation of the evening when he stormed off the stage, telling us all to ‘go fuck yourselves’. Not a happy night for Billyfor a variety of reasons, not least his being threatened with GBH in the loos at the interval for making disparaging remarks about the locals.
My mates and I went religiously every week. Because we were folk fans? Don’t be daft – late license till 1 am.