[Dixielandjazz] Splash Cymbals

[Stephen G Barbone]

Dear Bill & John:

I am looking for clarification about splash cymbals as they were used  
or not in the bands during the 1920s.

Sources such as Wikipedia (not always reliable) say that splash  
cymbals were used in bands during the 1920s and 30s and varied in size  
from about 5 to 22 inches in diameter

Plus, I had in my files the below information, quotes from record  
reviews)

"Once you pop Hot Dance Bands 1925 - 1927 in your stereo, the  
historical and technological details won't mean a thing. This is just  
plain good music. Even if you've never heard these tunes (and you  
probably haven't, unless you're an obscure collector), you'll feel  
nostalgic for an era 50 years before your birth. The original jazz  
attitude wasn't so serious. It was sassy and swinging. It had a smile,  
a shuffle, and a swagger that it largely outgrew. Remember how the  
clever unison riffs were always punctuated by a little cymbal splash  
at the end? Ah, the good old days"

"In 1922, between cocktails, F. Scott Fitzgerald christened the Jazz  
Age, which thereupon lived up to its moniker with gay abandon bringing  
us to Cole Porter, whose song "Let's Misbehave" shows how  
promiscuously jazz by the late 1920s had debauched Western  
civilization. Here is a popular dance band laden with such antiquities  
as fiddles, tuba and splash cymbals, yet their rakish syncopation and  
scat vocal chorus are as modern as the Chrysler Building. "Let's  
Misbehave" ain't jazz, but sure is jazzy. Plus it's more campy fun  
than Cole Porter's coming-out party, which we hear was simply to die  
for, darlings."  (Irving Aronson and His Commanders - 1920s)

And I sometimes work in a 20s band with a drummer who ends with a  
cymbal strike. It is a small cymbal which he calls a splash cymbal and  
says they were used in the 20s. (His drum kit is an an authentic set  
from that era)

Questions:

Were splash cymbals used in the 20s bands?

Are those cymbal endings on many of those songs played in the 1920s,   
splash, or choke cymbals? Or?

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband