Club Rollaway Dance debuts tonight at Charlottetown Legion
A new, yet old, dance is coming to Charlottetown this week.
The Club Rollaway Dance is a venture by a group endeavouring to reignite the spirit of The Rollaway Club in Charlottetown. Gary Chipman, Marsha Weeks and Brian Knox are partnering to deliver a night of lively entertainment from the 1950s and ‘60s from all different genres of music.
The first dance is tonight at the Charlottetown Legion upstairs in the Clover Club. The band will consist of Gary Chipman, Billy Roy Murnaghan, Pat King, Brian Knox and Heartz Godkin. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. and the dance is 8-11 p.m. The sale of 50/50 tickets and homemade pies will support the Charlottetown Legion. The event will also support cystic fibrosis. Admission is $10 at the door. The Legion is wheelchair accessible with an elevator onsite.
The original Rollaway Club in Charlottetown was on Grafton Street with a bowling alley downstairs and a dance hall upstairs. The dance hall, owned by the MacDonald family, was extremely popular in the 1940s, ‘50s and early ‘60s with well-attended dances. Many musicians also started playing there at the Rollaway at a young age since the venue wasn’t licensed to sell alcohol.
In the 1940s, Don Messer and his Islanders played there from time to time between road trips. In the early 1950s, a Charlottetown stage band, The Downtowners, played regularly, followed by The Tremtones, P.E.I.’s first rock ‘n’ roll band. The building eventually became another popular club called The Showboat.
Chipman, co-organizer and host of the event, is a well-known Island musician who started his musical career on the Don Messer Jubilee as a guest fiddler and has toured with many wellknown musicians.
“There was no alcohol sold at the Rollaway in the old days, however there may have been a few pints passed around back stage . . . ,” Chipman jokes.
“There’s a lot more than me that have great stories about the Rollaway to share. We look forward to hearing them on October 30th.”
Knox also hopes the event will be a night of nostalgia — a chance to share stories, dance to music of that era and even do a little rollaway trivia.
“We’ve got piano, saxophone, drums, the fiddle, guitar, bass and exceptional vocalists set to take the stage that evening,” says the drummer for dance.
Weeks, who has been busy promoting the dance, says she has heard plenty of positive feedback and is hoping people come out to meet new and old friends and dance the night away.
“With a good crowd, my hope is that we can make the Club Rollaway Dance a regular event year-round.”
For information, contact Weeks at 902-314-1865.