JAZZ, ETC.

Where to take your wife or the current woman you love is a constant problem in Boston, I've found. (I didn't mean it that way, bub; I'm talking about going out). It's especially rugged if you have an overtrained musical car that refuses to take in anything with fiddles, accordions, or rhumba bands from Brookline-on-the-East River, pronounced Flatbush.

But help is practically around the corner. I mean the one at Huntington and Exeter, where the Copley Square Hotel is. Plans are virtually completed to bring in Charlie Vinal's Rhythm Kings to the old Hop Scotch Room on a weekend basis

Friday and Saturday nights, with a Sunday afternoon musicale a l'improvisation--beginning this Sunday with a 3-to-6 session. Informality is to be the keynote, since the first customers are expected to be friends of the musicians or folks already indoctrinated to a few of the delights of dixieland jazz. However, anyone wandering into the Copley Square will have an opportunity to find out something about the music he'll hear, because along with the informal atmosphere (musicians and listeners mixing freely and discussing the music, weather, war, and T. S. Eliot between sets) will be explanatory cards at every table, slanted especially toward the neophyte.

Here's the idea. A guy who never heard jazz before meanders into the room for a drink and is assailed with 18 choruses of "Sensation Rag." Ordinarily, he might think "Ki-rist, what the hell is this?" but a little card on the table explains "You are listening to dixieland jazz. . . This is the music of gay New Orleans, of Buddy Bolden and king Oliver, of Jelly Roll Morton and the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, of Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and the New Orleans Rhythm Kings. . . . Only at the Dixieland Room of the Copley Square Hotel can Bostonians hear such half-forgotten jazz classics as "Muskrat Ramble." 'Jazz Me Blues,' Ballin' the Jack,' 'Come Back Sweet Papa,' or 'That Da Da Strain'." On the other side will be included a note to the effect that the musicians will be happy to answer questions concerning their music and earnestly request that they do not be asked to play "People Will Say We're In Love," "Oh What a Beautiful Morning," "One O'Clock Jump," or "Body and Soul."

Well, the average guy has enough of an open mind to perk up a little, if only in hopes that someone will sing the fascinatingly-titled "I Ain't Gonna Give Nobody None of My Jelly Roll." (Rest assured, though--no vocals, no rhumbas, no waltzes, not even "I Got Rhythm"). After all, anybody can turn on the radio and get "Mares Eat Oats" or "Sunday, Monday and Always." Or you can dance to "Paper Doll" from juke joint to $1.50 cover without any trouble (aside from $.90 for a week highball). But it's the hardest thing in the world to find any place that will serve you. "Tin Roof Blues,' "Original Dixieland One Step," and "Fidgety-Feet," especially with chummy program notes.

The boys in the band, for this Sunday, will be Charlie Vinal (clarinet), Johnny Windhurst (cornet), George Lugg (trombone,) Ev Schwarz (piano), Johnny Fields (bass), Inky Ingersoll (banjo), and Jack Hart (drums). Johnny Windhurst, it will be recalled, came up from New York with Jim Moynahan '23, for a session last month. Since, then, he's moved to South Weymouth (living with Charlie Vinal). George Lugg is the veteran tailgate trombonist of Chicago jazz fame who appeared twice last summer at the Harvard Jazz Club's sessions with Art Hodes' band. He's making the trip up from New York. The others are Boston musicians who have frequently appeared at previous sessions.

A quartet consisting of Vinal, Windhurst, Schwarz, and Hart will play for the jazz fans, the intellectual curious, and the hardier dancers beginning a week from Friday night. Of course you can never tell who might sit in. An intriguing possibility presents itself when Louis Armstrong comes to Boston. Since the hand plays a good many of Louis' old tunes, such as "Muskrat Ramble," "Dippermouth Blues,' "Struttin' With Some Barbecue," "Sunset Cafe Stomp," "Big Butter and Egg Man," "Come Back Sweet Papa," and "Squeeze Me," you might stumble into the master himself dipping back into his very colorful past to play again the tunes he likes best but has given up because he now leads a commercial dance band.