The Hop Scotch Room of the Copley Square Hotel is reopening Friday night with Charlie Vinal's Rhythm Kings, the only dixieland jazz band in eNw England. The venture is being backed by Dick Schmidt of Milton and two Harvard servicemen who hope that Army, Navy, and Marine students stationed around the campus will drop in, if only to be helpful.

Charlie Vinal, as most Boston jazz fans know, is something of a hotrock clarinetist and a pretty damn fine guy. A siege of infantile paralysis several years ago nearly put Charlie out for the count, but after eight months in an iron lung he picked up fast and now plays clarinet as tirelessly as ever from a wheelchair. Pee Wee Russell and Frank Teschemacher represent his school of hot clarinet, and Charlie is an apt pupil. His record collection is one of the best in New England, and Charlie's home has for years been a regular stop for visiting jazz musicians, many of whom have cut discs in the Vinal living room on Charlie's recording machine.

The rest of the band is made up of Johnny Windhurst, the sensational 17-year-old cornetist from New York who has moved to South Weymouth after a brief visit to Boston earlier this winter (an example of how a sincere mutual interest can draw people together in nothing flat), Evan Schwarz on piano, and George Ohlson on drums.

It's a rare deal, with the band sponsored by jazz fans--two of them in the army--who are willing to risk their modest captal on the artistic investment. Many folks around town have volunteered their services in putting the band across--John Bergen, Cambridge artist, has begun a series of cards to be placed at the tables as part of a promotional scheme aimed at people who aren't quite sure of what dixieland jazz is all about.

Dancing--and just plain listening by the aficionados--starts at 8 P.M. Fridays and Saturdays, with no cover, no minimum. The soldiers backing the band trust that their fellow servicement and Harvard undergraduates will figure that they're going SOMEWHERE for a few drinks on Saturday nights--so why not help out their colleagues by making the Copley Squares Hop Scotch Room 7.

The venture is set for four weeks, with an option. Whatever happens, it's a great break for honest, uncompromising Jazz. The band is fearless--anyone asking for a waltz will be politely informed that a dozen choruses of "Basin Street Blues" is much better for the nerves, and all requests for rhumbas will be filled with "Riverboat Shuffle."

Charlie Vinal, Johnny Windhurst, and Ev Schwarz appeared last Sunday at the Jazz Club's ninth session of the season, with George Lugg coming up from New York to lend his trombone to the ensemble. George is currently with Ed Farley's band (which includes Rod Cless and Ken Duvallon of the old Art Hodes Columbia Five which served "Clarinet Marmalade" with bacon and eggs at Childs' 03rd Street Restaurant in New York). Lugg will be going to Canada for the rest of the month with the Farley band, and then opening at the Tic Toc here in town after Louis Armstrong departs. If, after that, George has to fall back on such embarrassing jobs as the one he had with Pancho's band at the Copley Plaza last fall, he plans to stay in Boston and join Charlie Vinal's band at the Copley Square (provided that the sponsors' bankrolls haven't been depleted!) on the strength of his belief that playing jazz a couple of nights a week for union scale and taking a day job for the rest is better than making $120 a week with a sickening hotel orchestra. That, my friends, is devotion to an ideal.