From the late 1950s, Cousaert ran a club in
Ostend that became known for playing American
R&B music which was, at the time, rarely heard in Europe.
Eric Burdon, who visited the club as a teenager, said that "We were attracted by the sounds on the jukebox... It wasn't the normal top 10 stuff. He had
Ray Charles and
Charles Brown, blues people." Cousaert regularly visited the Q Club in
London, run by Jamaican-born
Count Suckle, which was frequented by many musicians on the
British R&B scene. By the late 1960s, Cousaert ran the Groove
discotheque in Ostend, playing mid-tempo
soul and
ska music that later developed into what became known in Belgium as the
Popcorn style. In the 1960s and 1970s, Cousaert also worked as a
public relations executive for
Muhammad Ali in Europe. Cousaert continued to organise concerts in Belgium for R&B and
soul singers. He was instrumental in setting up the regular Beach Festivals in Belgium. == Death ==