It had been years since I last visted Soultex Records’ owner and Dallas studio veteran Roger Boykin’s Duncanville home, but I hadn’t realized that it had been nine years. His ranch house, neat as always, was exactly as I remembered it – down to the Soultex records pinned into the wall in a arrangement that reminded me of a cross. “Man, I never got that Savoir Flair 7,” I jokingly complained, until Roger went into the kitchen and, grabbing from the stash he’s kept atop his oven for the past 18 years, brought me back the last copy he had. Too bad he hadn’t kept a copy of Soultex 102 – his ex-wife’s brother Terry Brooks solitary release. I’d never even seen a copy previous to that day, not even in Roger’s home.
Being the gentleman that he is, he agreed to let me peruse the records I hadn’t seen the previous trip, which was a blast. Roger’s a packrat, and amidst copies of his own releases, he had healthy amounts of Strata East albums (“You can only have ’em if I have ’em on CD.” he said), a mass amount of early 80s Dallas boogie 45s (Roger played on nearly every early 80s soul record to originate in this city, it seems), acetates, test presses and – this one floored me – psychedelic high school band albums. Go figure.
Before leaving, we sorted through some reel to reels of his early 80s jingles, as he played me the final mixes on cassette. “That sounds like Savoir Flair,” I said. Roger then explained how many of the Savoir Flair tunes began as jingles, and that he’d tape looped the one minute backing tracks to create new instrumentals for that album.
Gotta get those multi track reels transferred. Who knows what lies in store?
