[6] The club became famous for the high quality of its all-black stage shows and the hospitality of its owner, who greeted patrons individually at the top of the stairs.
Famous African-American musicians and entertainers, including Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald, often frequented the club after finishing their engagements elsewhere in the city, and sometimes performed impromptu on stage with the house band.
[7] The club was located in Little Burgundy, a mainly black, inner-city residential neighbourhood where several Canadian jazz musicians grew up, notably Oscar Peterson and Oliver Jones.
Two years later his son Kenny Rockhead sold the club to Roué Doudou Boicel, who moved his jazz and blues nightclub The Rising Sun there from its original home on Sainte-Catherine Street West.
The jam session included Oliver Jones, Norman Marshall Villeneuve, Leroy Mason, Glenn Bradley and Richard Parris.