Troubadour

Kev Boyd on A romantic take on one of London’s old school coffee bars

The Troubadour is an old school coffee house in London’s Earls Court. It’s been around for years and as well as serving coffee it also has a well-stocked bar, serves decent food, puts on small gigs and has a specialist wine shop located in the adjoining store. It’s probably best known by a lot of people for being the venue for a folk club back in the early sixties that was one of the small number of places Bob Dylan played on his first visit to England in the winter of 1962. One of the resident singers at ‘The Troub’ during that time was Martin Carthy. He and Dylan quickly became friends who spent a lot of time together during Bob’s first visit and continued to stay in contact for a number of years.

A young Paul Simon was also around the London folk club scene during that period and Carthy famously taught him his way of singing the English traditional song Scarborough Fair. Depending on whose version of events you believe, either Simon or an unscrupulous, unnamed music publisher immediately copyrighted the song and pocketed the thousands, maybe millions, of dollars that Simon & Garfunkel’s later recording would garner. Carthy was, quite understandably, furious and bore a bitter grudge for many years. It took a phone call from Simon in 2001 to clear the air and the pair eventually played ‘their’ song together at one of Simon’s London gigs that year. Back in the 60s Carthy had also often played both Scarborough Fair and another of his songs, Lord Franklin to Bob Dylan, who would later re-write them as Girl From The North Country and Bob Dylan’s Dream respectively with no apparent annoyance on Carthy’s part.

I first visited The Troubadour the day after attending Martin Carthy’s 70th birthday concert in 2011 – it somehow seemed appropriate. I can confirm they do a great breakfast and even on a busy Sunday morning the service was efficient and friendly. Various beer bottles, coffee mugs and cocktail glasses hang above the bar and the shelves that stretch across the windows are filled with vintage coffee jugs of various sizes, types and styles. There’s an ancient coffee grinder that may – or more likely may not – still be in working order. I love places like this: places that aren’t afraid to wear their rough edges with pride; places that don’t feel the need to pander to the Ikea aesthetic or whatever the latest in-vogue interior design trend happens to be; places that positively revel in their self-imposed quirkiness.

I got the impression the cafe hadn’t changed much since its 60s heyday, and as I sat there on that bright spring Sunday morning I could just about imagine a young Bob Dylan propping up the bar all those years ago: that scrawny American kid who’d just blown in from God-knows-where, rapping with his equally scrawny English buddy, Carthy; Bob, who’d not quite yet perfected the disinterested arrogance that would define his public persona just a few years later; Dylan, who’d just recently dropped the verbal mouthful that was his given name and adopted the moniker of an early poet hero.

Maybe this Bob had occupied the seat in which I was now sat; maybe the scrawny American kid had even strummed a tune or two on a borrowed guitar; maybe he’d mumbled a few half-remembered lines from Lord Franklin; maybe then filled in the gaps with his own half-remembered verses:

“While riding on a train goin’ west
I fell asleep for to take my rest
I dreamed a dream that made me sad
Concerning myself and the first few friends I had…”

Maybe? Well, just maybe!

Kevin Boyd
Editor: Come Sing It Plain… A Martin Carthy Fansite and #CarthyArchive: The Martin Carthy Broadcast Archive

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