Donovan

By Dave Thompson

Les Cousins: The Soundtrack Of Soho’s Legendary Folk & Blues Club

Cherry Red (3-CD set)

Talk about the British folk scene of the 1960s and, sooner rather than later, the name Les Cousins will come up — no, not another of the unheard legends that bestrode that era like an arran-sweatered colossus (although there were plenty of those around at the time), but the venue wherein said colossi strutted their stuff.

An unprepossessing Greek Street restaurant, where the young Al Stewart shepherded the evening’s acts on and off the stage; where Sandy Denny and Paul Simon were as likely to appear as a toothless Irishman singing “Danny Boy”; where both the folk boom of the mid-1960s, and the variants that followed in its footsteps were born.

Les Cousins Club Continental opened in October 1964, in a space that once had held the Skiffle Cellar. A failure in that form, it reopened, sans the last two words, in April 1965, with a solid diet of folk music, and remained in action for the next seven years. During which time, more or less every British (and many American) folk artist of note either played there, or at least stopped by.

This box set — amazingly, the first to truly focus upon Les Cousins alone, as opposed to the overall scene of the day — merely scratches the surface of the club’s renown. Three discs of (many of) the venue’s best known guests could probably be followed by 30 stuffed with lesser known talents, and 300 of complete unknowns. If only anyone had recorded their performances…

Unfortunately, if there are any unknown live-at-Les Cousins tapes circulating… well, they’re still unknown. The 71 tracks spread across three discs here are universally taken from studio albums, although so many of them are hard (if not impossible) to find these days that that is nothing to sniff at.

Neither is the roll call of talents. Bert Jansch, Sandy Denny, Al Stewart, the Young Tradition, the Incredible String Band, Donovan, Julie Felix, Wizz Jones, the Third Ear Band, Plainsong, Bridget St John… Anne Briggs, who is due for the super deluxe treatment later this year, shares space with the immortal Nadia Cattouse; Hamish Imlach with Mudge & Clutterbuck; Paul Simon with Shirley Collins. And while the song selection is not as adventurous as some browsers might demand, it is certainly representative of the artists involved.

Of course, for a true impression of what a night at Les Cousins might have sounded like, the BBC would need to uncork the long mothballed London Folk Club Cellar tapes, the corporation’s own approximation of a venue such as this in the mid-late 1960s. A taste of that is, in fact, on tap in a forthcoming Martin Carthy BBC sessions box set, and we can only hope that more is in the pipeline, while anyone who actually remembers the show is still around to appreciate it.

In the meantime, however, let Les Cousins be your guide to a unique period in British folk, and the unique venue that catered for its admirers.