If you look into the life and career of Roger B. Swift, you’ll a man of skill and accomplishment. He was a US Navy medical corpsman, a draftsman for the architect Donald McCormick, and then worked at American Airlines for a number of years. He was also a member of American Legion and of the Greencountry Railroaders.

But Swift’s interests were much broader, and they were borne from a certain itch he carried from boyhood. In this episode of Goodbye Tulsa, we hear Swift’s daughter, Melanie Dickie, talk about her father’s deep-rooted love of jazz. At the time of Swift’s fascination, jazz was still in its infancy, but the admiration blossomed in Swift’s life. Much later in life, he became of a member of the Tulsa Founder’s Chorus and began singing in a barbershop quartet.