The Roost label was founded in 1949 by Arthur Faden, Bill Faden, Monty Kay and Ralph Watkins in New York City as an offshoot of the famous Royal Roost jazz club,
Shortly after founding the label, Jack Hooke and Sammy Kaye acquired the label from the founders. From 1950 until 1958 the label was run by Jack Hooke and Teddy Reig The output of the label was almost entirely jazz with heavy emphasis on artists such as Stan Getz and Bud Powell
The label was called both Roost and Royal Roost - the names were used interchangeably on album artwork. In August 1958, Morris Levy purchased the label and it was combined with Roulette Jazz. The Roost name continued to be used by Roulette for some period of time, but eventually the Roost artists were transferred to the Roulette label
The Roost and Royal Roost label was first green, then blue, with silver print. "ROOST" (or 'ROYAL ROOST") was on the perimeter of the label above the center hole. Green labels were used for the first press runs (perhaps 250-400 copies) on the original 400 series of 10" releases at least up until RLP-421. Later runs used the blue labels.
