A special New Year’s Eve, 1948 menu from New York City’s famed Royal Roost jazz club, signed ‘Season’s Greetings / Charlie Parker’.

This was part of the legendary jazz collection of Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts (1941-2022), and sold at auction in 2023 by Christie’s, London.

The menu, promoting ‘A Bobby New Year’, is signed on the back by Parker in blue ballpoint pen.  Parker was resident at the pioneering Bebop venue throughout late December 1948 and January 1949, broadcasting in the early hours of the New Year. According to Parker scholar Lawrence O. Koch, the club–originally a fried chicken restaurant–began hosting jazz acts ‘as a one-night-a-week experiment, [which] blossomed into a regular six-night gig and triggered the move of jazz onto New York’s main drag.  The club, which featured a low (ninety cent) admission charge, a peanut gallery for non-drinkers or adolescents, and a bop primer at every table, became a sensation; almost every name associated with the bop movement, including [Dizzy] Gillespie’s big band appeared on it’s bandstand.’

This was sold as part of Lot 513 in the Christie’s auction Charlie Watts: Gentleman, Collector, Rolling Stone. In 1960, then graphic designer Watts wrote and illustrated a book in tribute to his hero Charlie Parker, Ode to a High Flying Bird.

Card opened 9 1/2″ x 7 1/2″, framed to 17 1/2″ x 13″.  In Very Good condition, with a long flattened horizontal fold down the middle, faint ink imprinting across the top, and minor brown staining to the bottom, matted out.

An exceptional Charlie Parker collectible, with superb provenance. With music autograph expert Roger Epperson’s Certificate of Authenticity, Recordmecca’s written lifetime guarantee, a copy of the Christie’s lot label, and our card noting this was part of the Charlie Watts Collection.