Performance · Production

Roger Troutman

funk musician in Zapp

Hamilton, United States • 1951-11-29 – 1999-04-25

Roger Troutman is credited on 1,417 releases across 471 albums tracked on Gatefold, active 1964–2025 — the collector-built map of who actually made the music.

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1,417

Pressings credited

471

Albums

Decades active

545

In collections

Biography

Roger Troutman (November 29, 1951 – April 25, 1999), also known simply as Roger, was an American singer, musician, songwriter, and record producer. He was the founder of the band Zapp who helped spearhead the funk movement and influenced West Coast hip-hop due to the scene's heavy sampling of his music. Troutman frequently used the talk box, a device that is connected to an instrument (frequently a keyboard, but most commonly a guitar) to create different vocal effects. Troutman used a custom-made talkbox—the Electro Harmonix "Golden Throat"—through a Moog Minimoog and later in his career a Yamaha DX100 FM synthesizer. As both band leader of Zapp and in his subsequent solo releases, he scored a bevy of funk and R&B hits throughout the 1980s and regularly collaborated with hip-hop artists in the 1990s.

Bio from Wikipedia