Roger Boykin

Roger Boykin has been a major contributor to the Texas music scene for the past several decades, as a jazz player on various instruments, an educator, a radio announcer, a composer, arranger, author and publisher of print music and numerous songs. He is a college graduate, an Army veteran, and founder of Soultex Records and Soultex Publishing Company. He has performed, toured, and recorded with many world‐class musicians, singers, and comedians, playing either guitar, saxophone, electric bass, or piano. The list includes: Buster Smith, “Red” Garland, Billie Harper, Dewey Redman, Hank Crawford, Marlena Shaw, Jimmy Witherspoon, James Clay, Leon Spencer, Jr., Bill Cosby, Redd Foxx, Rudy Ray Moore, Merl Saunders, Curtis Amy, Lester Bowie, James Moody, Sonny Stitt, Cedar Walton, John Hardee, Shelley Carrol, Ted Dunbar, Roosevelt Wardell, Eddie Moore, Patrice Rushen, David “Fathead” Newman, Johnny “Guitar” Watson, and Isaac Hayes. His tour with Newman led to a Warner Bros. recording called, “Front Money,” for which Boykin served as an arranger and composer of two orginals, “Suki Duki,” and “So Fine.” While living in San Francisco he met and collaborated with “Blue” Mitchell and Junior Cook on a recording which was never released. But a few years later Mitchell recorded Roger’s composition, “Andrea” which was released on the Blue Note label on an album entitled, “Step Lightly,” (Blue Note Classic, LT‐1082), released in 1980.

Boykin has worked as an educator for years, teaching privately, at Brook Mays Music Company and in the Dallas Public Schools at the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, teaching guitar, bass guitar, music theory, functional piano, comprehensive musicianship, and jazz vocal. Along with Luis Martinez, he helped to develop the first Rhythm and Blues band program in the school’s history. As Director of the R & B Band he has had the privilege of doing the arranging and composing, and giving his students the basics of classic funk. Several of his most talented students have gone on to good careers in various parts of America.

Boykin has written several extended works for large ensembles. He wrote a multi‐ themed, jazz‐oriented, orchestral piece called “Patience” on a commission from the Black Academy of Arts and Letters. It was performed in concert in 1986 by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. A few years later he received a commission from the Dallas Wind Symphony to write a fanfare. The result was a piece called “Freedmen’s Town Flourish,” which was performed at the Meyerson Symphony Hall. Both works received critical praise. He has received commissions from KERA‐TV to write special music for documentary programs. He has written numerous radio jingles and commercials, some of which have been heard throughout America. Cyclosis is just one of several books currently available from Soultex and authored by Boykin. The others include: “Four‐ String Harmony For The Jazz Guitar,” “Saxaerobics,” “The Key‐Position Method For The Bass Guitar,” “Eight Jazz Waltzes For Piano,” and “Piano Exercises, Basic To Difficult.” In addition, he has published a rhapsody for piano entitled “Patience” and a choral work called “Deliver Us.” Several of his works remain unpublished, including string quartets and jazz vocal ensemble arrangements. In 1990 his musical comedy entitled “Zanzibar” was performed at the Black Academy of Arts and Letters.