Roger Boykin

Roger Boykin is a multi-talented musician, having worked in many areas of music including blues, jazz, gospel, and funk. He plays various instruments such as, guitar, bass, piano/keyboards, flute, and saxophone. A Life Member of Local 72-147, he began his Union membership in 1955 joining the Pre-Civil Rights Era Black Local 168 in Dallas, having now been an AFM member for more than 60 years.

As a teacher he has taught numerous singers and instrumentalists working around the world today. For 16 years he was a part of the music faculty at Booker T. Washington Performing and Visual Arts High School in Dallas, Texas, a school famous for training and inspiring performers in jazz, gospel, and popular genres. Boykin has published music method books for piano, guitar, bass guitar, and saxophone. He has produced various recordings for his Soultex Records label, which he founded in 1967. Several of these recordings are soul and jazz collector’s items. He currently gigs and teaches select students in Dallas or via FaceTime. As a song writer he has written for albums by David “Fathead” Newman, Blue Mitchell, Joyce Lofton,

Brenda Delasanta, and others. One of his symphonic works was performed by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in 1986. As an author he wrote the play “Zanzibar” which was performed at The Black Academy of Arts and Letters in 1990, and the novel “A Date At The Opera” which was published digitally by iBooks in 2015. For 22 years he hosted a jazz radio show called “Just Jazz” on radio station KKDA-AM in North Texas.