Before the Club was started
there was little live entertainment in Old Harlow especially for the wider
community. A small group of jazz enthusiasts, principally, Greg Racey, Bob French and Vince Dunn, decided to do something
about this and in the spring of 2003 they formed
Marigolds Jazz Club.
Sadly Vince died in September 2005. He had been the
landlord of the Marquis of Granby for 39 years before retiring to pursue his
many other interests and duties supporting the local community in the Old Town
In Vince’s memory the Club organised a memorial concert on 4th February 2006
held at the ARC in the Old Town. Nearly150 people attended and over £1100 was
raised and donated to Leukaemia Research.
However, the Club continues to be a friendly, low cost, non profit making organisation
offering good quality music. It is still run by a small group of volunteers who
have not only freely given of their time but have on occasions used their own
money to support the Club. Although run principally for the local community in
Old Harlow, anyone is more than welcome and the Club
now attracts people from throughout Essex and Hertfordshire, London and beyond.
In order to make the music accessible to anyone every
effort has been made to try and keep the price of admission as low as possible.
It was only reluctantly in 2007 that the admission prices were raised for the
very first time.
However, the Club’s has never compromised in its principle of employing only
the best musicians. Many of the jazz musicians are winners of, or have been
nominated for, a much coveted British Jazz Award and many regularly tour the UK
and abroad .
Mid monthly gigs were introduced in 2006 to offer alternative types of music to
the Jazz such as Blues, Soul, Funk, Salsa etc. and Music at Marigolds came into
being. However, demand was varied and recognising that many of the audience
were blues fans it was decided to start Marigolds Blues Club at the start of
2008.
After a difficult start the Blues Club established a regular audience base and
audience numbers have grown immeasurably. There have been some truly great
blues gigs and as with the Jazz Club, Marigolds Blues Club will seek to employ
only the best musicians and bands as the audience reaction to all the Blues
gigs will testify.