 Joe Jones himself claims to have created his version of the Hi-Hats in 1926, so by that time Skip had already been using his for a couple of years. The Skip Rutherford version, the prototype, he was using by 1924 in the upright version of it. He proceeded to use it from 24 to 29 in the incarnation that I have a diagram of. These diagrams can be seen in an article that I wrote for Drum Magazine, but it's really kind of interesting how it came to light and kind of a funny story and a tragic story. What happened was I received back in 1994 a big packet from my friend Mike Morris. Mike Morris at the time was an international promotions manager, kind of a marketing position with Zildjian. Also for ten years, Mike was the West Coast artist relations guy, so he was kind of the West Coast version of the John DeCrisis version of the Museo role, so he was working with a lot of top drummers and accumulating a lot of stories and he was just an all-around great guy. All of a sudden, I had known him since the late 70s, he worked at Marshall Music in Lansing, Michigan before he ever got into the music industry per se, but anyhow I get this big packet from Mike and I open it up and there's page after page after page of text and drawings and notes and everything from the Skip Rutherford. I mean, it was his whole life story. The guy went back to how he got interested in percussion in the first place and a lot of drummers, when you get to talk to him very long, it's not long before you hear what really inspired them. I can't count the number of people that I've talked to that say it was the Beatles on its solo and that night they knew and it slipped on a switch and so on. In the music method, it was a parade in Chicago for Skip Rutherford, it was a shrine band at the Pasadena Rose Parade and he knew from that parade on he was going to be a drummer and he had an uncle that encouraged him and even gave him the money to go out and all he could afford was a pair of cymbals, but he ended up using those cymbals for the next 60 years. I mean, too high school and I would have been a 50 year career and that, but anyhow, all of this stuff was in this packet and all these pages and it was a, it had been, I called Mike first, I said, what's the deal? And he said, well, we don't know. He said this, we got this packet, it was addressed to Armand and you know, Armand's a busy guy, he's got a cymbal company to run and it wasn't clear why he got this packet of papers, but it goes through this guy's whole life story and has all these drawings and it points out that he made these prototypes in 1922, 1923, he had a working operational hi-hat, wasn't called that, but it was working prototype going by 24 and use that for, you know, five years before it went on to other, other versions. Anyhow, it's filled and they, they just didn't know what to do with this. They, Armand certainly didn't know what this was all about and he didn't know what to think. I mean, what do you do with something like that? Do you respond to the guy? If you respond to him and say, no, you weren't the first, then you're just creating an adversarial situation. And if, if you're threatening with litigation, you know, it's a little early for that and it wasn't clear even what he wanted. If he wanted verification or authentication or royalties, maybe for all the hi-hat symbols. So that's not to say anything and just pass the buck. So they put it on another guy's desk and it went from desk to desk in the Zildjian offices for over six months. And, and finally about the second or third time it came to Mike's desk, he punted and he, he sent it to me and when I called him for an explanation, he said, we just didn't know what to do with it. We don't know what this guy wants. We don't know what his claim is. Um, we don't know how to verify it. We're not even interested in verifying it, um, have fun. So I thought, well, I'm going to talk to Skip. This is great. Cause he had his phone number there and I wanted to talk to Mike first and, and so I'm, but I thought, well, I'm, I'm going to talk to Skip. And, uh, this is great because he, he talks about still having these symbols, still having these prototype stands and so on. So I, I called him and I, I asked for Skip this, this older lady answers. And I, uh, she said, he's gone. And she said, they cooked him. And what do you say? I mean, I, I said, I, I beg your pardon. And then she said, they cooked him and then she calmed down a little bit. She was still pretty hot and, and kind of mad, but I had no idea what was going on. And, uh, she, she proceeded to tell me a story that, uh, relatives coaxed him into moving and this was, they were in California and it was a 400 mile move to Oregon with his daughter in the U-Haul and it had no air conditioning. So they got him in this big old truck with no air conditioning and he's an elderly man and it was over a hundred degrees out. He should never have been in the truck and, uh, he died if he did. He had exhaustion. They were like, so, so he was gone and I, I thought, oh man, and all that stuff. So I kind of, uh, raised that subject. You know, I said, well, yeah, I introduced myself, explained why I was calling. I said it evidently, you know, he's still, he, he left all of these symbols and prototypes of the hardware that he had worked on over the years and so on. And, uh, she said, oh yeah, I tossed all that. So in the six months between when he, he worked on this, this, this whole packet and sent it off. And when I was talking to her, she had trashed everything. She had sent, I mean, she didn't save a thing of all those prototypes and the symbols themselves, the paperwork and everything. It all, it all got tossed.