History

Ralph Watkins originally opened the Royal Roost as a chicken restaurant. After a difficult start, Watkins was persuaded by Sid Torin

Symphony Sid

Sid Torin was a long-time jazz disk jockey in the United States. Many critics have credited him with introducing jazz to the mass audience.-Early life:...

 (D.J. Symphony Sid) to try presenting modern jazz at the club. Beginning in 1948 the club began to showcase the likes of Charlie Parker

Charlie Parker

Charles Parker, Jr. , famously called Bird or Yardbird, was an American jazz saxophonist and composer....

, Dizzy Gillespie

Dizzy Gillespie

John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was an American jazz trumpet player, bandleader, singer, and composer dubbed "the sound of surprise".Together with Charlie Parker, he was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz...

, Fats Navarro

Fats Navarro

Theodore "Fats" Navarro was an American jazz trumpet player. He was a pioneer of the bebop style of jazz improvisation in the 1940s. He had a strong stylistic influence on many other players, most notably Clifford Brown.-Life:Navarro was born in Key West, Florida, to Cuban-Black-Chinese parentage...

, Dexter Gordon

Dexter Gordon

Dexter Gordon was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and an Academy Award-nominated actor . He is regarded as one of the first and most important musicians to adapt the bebop musical language of people like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Bud Powell to the tenor saxophone...

, Tadd Dameron

Tadd Dameron

Tadley Ewing Peake "Tadd" Dameron was an American jazz composer, arranger and pianist. Saxophonist Dexter Gordon called Dameron the "romanticist" of the bop movement, while reviewer Scott Yanow writes that Dameron was the "definitive arranger/composer of the bop era".-Biography:Born in Cleveland,...

, and Max Roach

Max Roach

Maxwell Lemuel "Max" Roach was an American jazz percussionist, drummer, and composer.A pioneer of bebop, Roach went on to work in many other styles of music, and is generally considered alongside the most important drummers in history...

. The new programme drew large crowds and the club soon took on a second name, the Metropolitan Bopera House. In 1949 a records label, Roost Records

Roost Records

Roost Records was a record label established in 1949, primarily to record jazz, taking its secondary name from the New York club with which it was associated...

, was founded by Arthur Faden, Bill Faden, Monty Kay and Ralph Watkins which recorded many of the musicians who performed at the club. In September of 1948 Miles Davis

Miles Davis

Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...

debuted his nonet at the club. By the early 1950s the jazz componenet of the Roost was moved to Watkins's new club, Bop City.