Floor Singers Welcome! Memories of Les Cousins and the Soho Folk Music Scene

by 

Stuart Penney

“…in the overheated, overcrowded, under-ventilated cellar room that has been housing folk music since pre-skiffle days” - Karl Dallas, Melody Maker, October 1969.  

In his 2015 autobiography Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink (pub. Viking) Elvis Costello devotes an entire chapter to his early experiences as a live performer.  In forensic detail he describes the clubs and pubs where unknowns in search of honour and experience could play for free, regardless of ability.  We’d call them Open Mic Nights these days, but back then the floor singers weren’t really a feature, more a way to fill the gaps between the paid performers.  Traditionally, folk clubs were the natural habitat of the floor singer and one place you were sure to find them in the late 60s was the most celebrated London folk venue of them all, Les Cousins.

The debut Bert Jansch LP from 1965

Located in the basement of a restaurant at 49 Greek Street in the heart of Soho, Les Cousins was small and claustrophobic, holding maybe 150 to 200 people when full.  Reached by a steep, narrow wooden staircase leading down from the street with no discernible fire exits, it was probably a health and safety nightmare by today’s standards.

Descending into the cigarette smoke-filled gloom (almost everyone was a smoker back then), the folk fans passed under two large photographs mounted in the overhead stairwell. The pictures were alternate shots from the photo sessions which had produced the sleeves of Jansch and Renbourn's Bert and John LP (showing them playing the ancient Chinese game "Go") and the self-titled debut album by the a cappella trio The Young Tradition. The LPs in question were released in the same week of 1966 by Transatlantic records (TRA 144 and TRA 142, fact fans) so perhaps there was a promotional deal happening with Nat Joseph’s independent label. 

The photographer was Brian Shuel, an Irishman who snapped many London-based folk artists of the 60s. Even if you're not familiar with his name, I guarantee you've seen his work. Shuel was responsible for countless album covers, mostly on the Transatlantic, Topic and XTRA labels, including all those iconic early Bert Jansch and John Renbourn LP sleeves.

Bert & John LP 1966

Andy Matheou, the son of the Greek restaurant owner, ran the basement club and he could usually be found perched on a stool at the bottom of the staircase collecting the entrance fee of five shillings (25p).

There are various theories as to the origin of the name Les Cousins, the most obvious being Claude Chabrol’s eponymous 1959 film.  But I don’t recall hearing anyone use the French pronunciation when speaking of the club, with most people preferring the decidedly British “Lez Cuzzins” to the more exotic “Lay Coo-zan”.  Eventually the name would be abbreviated to, simply, “Cousins.”

The Young Tradition debut LP 1966

Although there had been a club presenting jazz and skiffle at 49 Greek Street as early as 1957, legend has it that Les Cousins opened as a folk and blues venue on Friday, April 16, 1965, the same day that the self-titled debut Bert Jansch LP was released.  If true, this was a wonderful piece of synchronicity, given that Bert was one of the pre-eminent performers at the club.

The venue was once a skiffle club

Within a year Cousins was an established part of the Soho scene and, together with the equally celebrated Bunjies in nearby Litchfield Street and the Troubadour across town in Earls Court, it became one of the three most important London folk clubs and a breeding ground for new and exciting acoustic music.  Davy Graham, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Ralph McTell, Roy Harper, John Martyn, Martin Carthy, Nick Drake, Cat Stevens, Donovan, Wizz Jones, Sandy Denny, the Incredible String Band, the Young Tradition, Alexis Korner and Al Stewart are just a few of the names who played there.  Visiting US artists such as Stefan Grossman, Tom Rush, "Spider" John Koerner, Dave Van Ronk and Jackson C. Frank also performed, while groups such as the Third Ear Band and Dr. Strangely Strange also squeezed onto the tiny stage. Paul Simon sang at Cousins several times during his 1965 London sabbatical, and it’s rumoured that Dylan, Hendrix and a pre-fame David Bowie dropped in, as observers if not performers.  In his formative years Al Stewart acted as compere for the all-night sessions, trying out new material on the dozing patrons in the small hours.  In 1967/68 artist fees ranged from a modest £5 - £10 for the performers just starting out, to a hardly lavish £15 - £20 for the more established names. Although mostly known as a weekend club, in the early years Cousins opened right through the week. A Melody Maker ad. from March 1966 declared "Please note. We are now open Mon-Sat afternoons for guitar practice, coffees, records etc. 3pm - 6.30pm. All members free."

I visited Cousins 15 or 20 times from mid-1967 through to 1969, sometimes attending the legendary weekend all-nighters.  These were marathon, uncomfortable affairs, sitting for hours on unforgiving wooden benches (former church pews, apparently) or, for the unlucky latecomers, the cold, hard floor.  The club didn’t have a drinks license and most of us couldn’t afford much more than a Coke and a sandwich, anyway. Some people would simply curl up in a corner and go to sleep, earning Cousins the nickname “the cheapest hotel in London”, before stumbling out into Greek Street as the tube trains began to run again on Sunday morning.

Bert Jansch later immortalised the scene in the song “Daybreak” from his 1977 album A Rare Conundrum (Charisma CAS 1127):   It’s Daybreak The all-nighter’s faded to a close
The last of the folkies
Rises and goes As the shock of the morning sun blinds your eyes
It’s Sunday morning

Moxy and John Lamont (guitar) pictured early 60s at the Witch's Cauldron folk club, Hampstead

One memorable Cousins performer was the harmonica player Mox Gowland, known simply as Moxy.  With his waist-length shock of red hair, matching beard and a collection of harmonicas in every key, worn bandolier style in an ammunition belt, he cut a fearsome figure.  I never fully discovered if Mox (as he was often billed) was a floor singer, a paid performer, or a mixture of the two. He played with whoever would agree to back him on guitar, including, at various times, Davy Graham, Isaac Guillory, John Lamont and Steve Bromfield and his Cousins appearances were sometimes advertised in Melody Maker.  There were even rumours he’d worked with an early version of the Alex Harvey Band.

Moxy was also an enthusiastic flautist but would sometimes overstay his welcome.  I heard dark (and possibly apocryphal) tales of Roy Harper threatening violence when Mox refused to stop playing his flute one night as Harper was ready to begin his set.  If true, this may well have happened on Saturday, April 15, 1967 when Harper and Moxy are documented as playing Cousins on the same bill as the Young Tradition and Al Stewart.  My strongest memory of Moxy is seeing him sweep along Greek Street late at night in a huge black cape, red hair flowing and carrying his assortment of harps in a small attaché case.

Les Cousins entrance showing Brian Shuel's photo of the Young Tradition

Two of the most popular Cousins performers were, undoubtedly, Roy Harper and John Martyn.  Although still exclusively acoustic players at the time, they brought a touch of rock & roll swagger into the folk world.  Harper entertained us with his wickedly accurate Dylan impersonations and convoluted song introductions, during which he would often dissolve into fits of stoned giggles at something only he found amusing.  As a 1969 Melody Maker review put it “[people were] enchanted by [Harper’s] contemporary comment, issued with his own special brand of hip talk, punctuating every line with a throaty chuckle, as is his habit”.  Roy’s version of Dylan’s “Girl From The North Country”, together with some textbook examples of his rambling audience chats, can be heard on the CD Live At Les Cousins, August 30, 1969 (Blueprint BP220CD). 

Roy Harper - Live At Les Cousins 1969 CD

In stark contrast to Harper’s gentle, blissed-out persona, John Martyn was a force of nature.  Loud and boisterous with a high-octane, aggressive guitar style, he would beat the daylights out of his battered instrument during each song, then swig flamboyantly from the bottle of beer at his feet before theatrically re-tuning for the next number.  A genuinely great guitar player, Martyn was known to use nearly a dozen different tunings, which was no help at all to those of us watching closely and trying to figure out how to play his songs. All the while he’d be cracking jokes and conducting noisy conversations with crowd members.  One night, someone in the front row drew attention to a huge, 6” split in the crotch of John’s jeans. Naturally, he found this hilarious and it became a running gag for the rest of the set. His self-deprecatory cry of “Ithangyew!”, delivered Arthur Askey style to acknowledge the applause between each number, would soon become his concert trademark.

Martyn’s big finale at Cousins was a rollicking version of Lonnie Johnson’s “Jelly Roll Baker”.  Unlike Johnson’s original medium-paced blues shuffle, John ripped into it double time, turning the song into a guitar tour de force.  It usually went down so well that when he ran short of material, Martyn would simply reprise “Jelly Roll Baker” adding, with mischievous glee, “You didn’t think I’d have the bleedin’ cheek to play it again, did you?” in his faux Cockney brogue.  When north of the border he would revert to broad Glaswegian, the result of a childhood spent alternating between Scotland and England.  Although the song was a fixture of his live set from at least 1967, “Jelly Roll Baker” didn’t appear on any of his records until 1973 when he recorded it, cheekily retitled “The Easy Blues”, for the album Solid Air (Island ILPS 9226).

Both men played Cousins endlessly (Roy Harper appeared there a documented 25 times between 1965-69) but by late 1968 the folk zeitgeist was changing.  Their respective second albums (Harper’s Come Out Fighting Ghengis Smith [CBS S BPG 63184] and Martyn’s The Tumbler [Island ILPS 9091]) tapped directly into the burgeoning underground rock scene, where their brand of progressive folk would attract a new, hip (and, of course, larger) audience.

Harper’s profile received a huge boost toward the end of 1968 when "Nobody’s Got Any Money In The Summer", a track from Come Out Fighting Ghengis Smith, was included on The Rock Machine Turns You On (CBS PR22), one of the earliest UK budget sampler LPs.  It reached the top 20 album charts in June 1969, selling an estimated 140,000 copies. John Martyn received similar mainstream exposure when the Island Records budget sampler You Can All Join In (IWPS 2), featuring "Dusty" a track from his second album The Tumbler, also charted around the same time.

The Rock Machine Turns You On LP 1968

Martyn’s acoustic years were also numbered and around 1971 I witnessed him trying out a Gibson SG electric in the Selmer guitar store on Charing Cross Road.  It was a portent of things to come. The Echoplex years were beckoning and as the new decade arrived Harper and Martyn left the folk world behind. In the coming years they would work with and/or influence the likes of Led Zeppelin, Pete Townshend, Kate Bush, Pink Floyd, Phil Collins and Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson.

Paul Simon at Les Cousins ​​circa 1965

But it wasn’t all well-known recording artists and influential guitar players at Cousins.  There were other hopefuls who played there. These were the floor singers. Between the big-name acts, or while we were waiting for someone to drag Bert Jansch or John Martyn out of the nearby Pillars of Hercules pub to play their set, the stage was turned over to virtually anyone who wanted to perform.  These amateur singers were of varying quality and ability, ranging from excellent, via passable, to 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 a Simon Cowell TV show, it’s the bad ones we tend to remember. 

Donovan at Les Cousins ​​circa 1965

One floor singer from around 1968 resembled a youthful Henry Kissinger.  Short and stocky of build with thick, horn-rimmed specs and severe short, wavy hair, he would accompany himself not with a guitar but a mandolin and 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 harmonica 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 I broke up with my girlfriend” 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 one particular night.  Mid-way through an interminable self-penned tale of woe with countless verses, he launched into the harmonica solo, only to find he’d put the instrument 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 harp over. In doing so he fumbled and dropped it. Almost in slow motion the harmonica cartwheeled from his grasp, bounced off the edge of the tiny 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 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 the part, she unfortunately lacked any vestige of musical ability.  I only saw her perform once, but it was a memorable occasion. Opening the homemade cover, which was little more than a piece of chenille fabric sewn into the shape of a guitar bag, she removed the cheapest instrument imaginable.  It was one of those terrible no-name plywood instruments which looked like it was made from old fruit crates and sold for maybe £20 in the 60s. It ticked all the boxes: heavy 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 back curtains.

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 batting an eyelid said “Oh, that’s strange. It was in tune when I left home this morning”.  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 rockin’ version of “Hard Headed Woman” from the 1958 Elvis movie King Creole (also covered by Wanda Jackson the same year).  Of course, while it lacked nothing in terms of presentation, it was desperately out of tune both vocally and instrumentally.  “Francoise” gave the song everything, including some energetic Elvis-style hip-swivelling. 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.

There were many other memorable floor singers at Cousins, some of which deserve a feature all to themselves.  But it was the headliners we had really come to see, and no one was more influential in the folk world back then than Davy Graham.  Unfortunately, Davy’s genius was also tempered by his legendary substance abuse, which gave his live performances an air of danger and unpredictability.  This eventually put his career on hold and in the mid-70s it wasn’t unusual to encounter the great man busking at Camden Market or hanging out in a Notting Hill squat for example (see postscript).  

Davy was still a star in the late 60s, however, and I arrived to see him play Cousins one weekend in 1968 with high expectations.  He was due on stage around 11 pm but midnight came and went with no sign of him. Eventually, an hour or more after the scheduled appearance time we heard a commotion at the entrance to the club and the most extraordinary sight greeted the assembled folkies.

Davy Graham - Midnight Man 1966

The staircase down from the street led to a doorway to the left of the stage and the performers had to weave their way through the audience (who were seated on the floor, for the most part) to perform.  Suddenly Davy Graham appeared amongst us and very slowly began to pick his way toward the stage. Always short-haired and smartly dressed, we were surprised to see his trademark crew-cut was covered by a brightly coloured bandanna.  As he came closer the reason for his slow progress became apparent. With a guitar case in one hand Davy 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 the leg of his stool and sat down.  Ominously, the guitar case remained firmly closed at this juncture. He then began to address the audience. What followed was the most extraordinary stream-of-consciousness imaginable, none of it accompanied by a single note of music.

After around 30 minutes or so of this rambling dissertation, even the dog had fallen asleep.  Being respectful folkies though, the audience were far too polite to give Davy 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, after what seemed like hours, he took out his trademark Gibson J50 and commenced to play some of the most incandescent jazz blues guitar. It was simply astonishing stuff and in retrospect worth every second of the interminable stoned preamble.  As it ended, Davy silently 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.

Davy Graham - Folk Blues and Beyond 1965

In April 1972, after operating for almost exactly seven years, Les Cousins closed its doors for good.  Many of the artists who came up through the club were, by that time, signed to major record labels and achieving fame and (modest) fortune on the university, theatre and festival circuit, commanding fees way beyond anything Cousins could offer.  The folk scene was changing, and the golden age was over.  

The opening quote at the top of the page is from an October 1969 Melody Maker review by folk music journalist Karl Dallas.  He was describing a Cousins performance by US ragtime blues guitarist Stefan Grossman (one of the shows I attended, incidentally) but his description could have applied to any given Friday or Saturday night at the club.  Les Cousins was undeniably hot, cramped and an uncomfortable place to spend the evening. But, equally, it can’t be denied that magic was created week in, week out in that dark cellar, the effects of which still reverberate throughout acoustic music today. 

At the time of writing (November 2019), 49 Greek Street is an anonymous Soho bar with an upmarket basement nightclub, unrecognisable from the Cousins era (except for perhaps the distinctive green tiling either side of the door, which remains).  But, if I may end with a threadbare cliché which has been used in countless songs (none of them folk songs, sadly), if those cellar walls could only talk, what tales they could tell.  A Davey Graham Postscript:

In the mid-70s I played guitar with a Scottish friend who lived in Latimer Road, down at the seedy end of Ladbroke Grove in west London.  I would visit him there in one of a row of small, terraced houses all of which were, at that time, occupied by squatters. The squat movement flourished in the capital during the 1970s, when an estimated 30,000 people lived in squats in Greater London.

For reasons which were never fully explained, Davey Graham sometimes showed up at the house to rendezvous with one of the residents.  We could only guess the purpose of his visits, but the fact that he always left looking reinvigorated with a spring in his step should have given us an indication.  I was quite starstruck at this brush with folk aristocracy, although few in the house seemed to know (or care) who he was. 

At this point Davey hadn’t released an album in five or six years and his profile was at a low point.  In an attempt to sum up his achievements in simple terms the more musically uneducated housemates might understand, I briefly explained that although Davey was a famous acoustic folk / blues guitarist, he had also been a huge influence on the rock world, notably Led Zeppelin.  This information was greeted with blank looks and shrugs, for the most part. I left it there but was tempted to add that Jimmy Page had adopted Graham’s guitar arrangement of “She Moved Through the Fair” and turned it into the live showcase “White Summer”, first with the Yardbirds and later with Led Zeppelin, where it became part of a medley together with Bert Jansch’s “Blackwaterside” (retitled “Black Mountain Side”), but decided that might be over-egging the pudding somewhat. 

The last time I saw Davey Graham at the Latimer Road squat he was in the narrow back garden which backed directly onto what was then London Underground's Metropolitain railway line (now the Hammersmith and City Line), at that point above ground.  As the trains rattled by I watched him doing chin-up exercises using some seemingly fragile overhead PVC pipes which formed part of a jerry-rigged communal plumbing system connecting the row of houses to a water main further down the street.  As I looked on, enthralled, an old Irishman named Mick O’Donnell, who cared little for Davey’s celebrity, but had clearly taken my earlier description on board, yanked a window open, stuck his head out and yelled “Oi! You!  Led Zeppelin! Fuck off out of it!”

Footnotes:

• In the early 70s Davy Graham changed the spelling of his name from “Davy” to “Davey”.  This happened at some point between 1970 and 1976 and the release of his albums Godington Boundary (President PTLS 1039) and All That Moody (Eron Enterprises ERON 007)

• In 1970 the compilation LP 49 Greek Street (RCA SF 8118) was released.  It featured studio tracks by artists associated with Les Cousins such as Keith Christmas, Andy Roberts, Mike Hart and Nadia Cattouse.  Apparently, the door shown on the LP sleeve belonged to a different building on Greek Street

• On 24 November 2004, Les Cousins was reopened for a one-off Nick Drake tribute.  This event took place over two floors of the building at 49 Greek Street and not just the basement. 

49 Greek Street LP 1970