Solly Lipsitz is one of those extraordinary figures around Belfast who always seems to come at things from his very own angle - one of those essential citizens who has consistently let the light in. Over the years he has been a musician, a metallurgist in the shipyard, a lecturer, a critic with the Belfast Telegraph, a broadcaster and the owner of a record shop in High Street. That said, his influence on the cultural life of the city is perhaps not sufficiently acknowledged, despite the regular name-checks from people like Van Morrison who, with his father, visited Solly's shop every Saturday throughout the 1950s. The son of a Warsaw Lipsitz and a Dublin Marcus, Solly was born in Lombard Street in Dublin and attended first a Presbyterian and later a Church of Ireland school (many other Jewish children, he recalls, went to the Christian Brothers in Synge Street). When Solly was nine years old, his family moved to Belfast and it was at Belfast High School that he first developed an interest in the arts in general and the visual arts and jazz in particular. Solly has always moved in an enlightened orbit, one of musicians, artists, actors and writers. Along with Paddy Shea, Colin Middleton, Gerard Dillon, J.G. Devlin and others, he was a vital element in the life of the Ulster Arts Club in Elmwood Avenue and over the years made many a strong point on assorted boards and advisory bodies. His influence has also been of a private nature - offering encouragement to often isolated young turks. Apart from Van Morrison, the poet Michael Longley is another creative spirit indebted to Solly's pioneering interest in jazz and who regularly availed of both his guidance and his vinyl. And what with the next-door neighbours in Ashley Avenue happening to be the Heaneys, it was quite a milieu - the joyous sounds of Sidney Bechet and Louis Armstrong coming from open windows into the distinctive air of south Belfast.
"The very first record I bought was a version of Margie by the Rhythm Makers and they were one of the very first mixed bands - Henry Allen, Pee Wee Russell, Eddie Condon, Fats Waller, Jimmy Lord, Zutty Singleton and Pops Foster. There was quite a bit of jazz on the BBC in the 1930s and when I was at school there had been a danceband programme every night and lots of the dancebands had jazz musicians playing with them. These were often American sidemen and soloists and quite often the bandleaders themselves were American. A lot of the people who came into listening to jazz at a later stage had been listening to all of these dancebands in the 1930s."
In a series for Ulster Television called Fifty Years Of Ulster Jazz, Solly once made the extraordinary revelation that as far back as 1925, the Larne Times was advertising a dance in an Orange Hall at which the music would be provided by the Glenarm Jazz Band. This was six months before the first Hot Five record even appeared! Even so, Solly was developing an interest in jazz at a time when it was not an easy interest to pursue. Records were not widely available and jazz aficionados sought each other out in the manner of any other underground movement. They met in each other's houses, they exchanged information and they listened with reverence to each other's precious recordings.
"When you have an interest like that you gravitate towards other people who have the same interest. For instance, I met Ken Smylie who was a Belfast trumpet player and was considered one of the important post-war people in the jazz revival. But these people are before your time and consequently you wouldn't know how important they were - even on the international scale. Then there was Gerry McQueen, who was a famous record-collector. He was one of these people who, before the war, went over to meet Duke Ellington and ended up with probably the world's greatest collection of Ellington recordings. He lived in Salisbury Avenue. "Then there was Tom Cusack who wrote the original discography of Jelly Roll Morton and he was my partner in opening Atlantic Records in 1953. We started out with collectors' records - both jazz and operatic and at that time there were a lot of embryonic jazz collectors. Van's father used to come every Saturday and he was more interested in the blues side of things - Howlin' Wolf and Little Brother Montgomery - but he was also interested in traditional jazz. I remember Van very well in a grey, school cap." Solly also became a point of contact for visiting musicians and over the years he met and got to know many of the greats. In this sense Solly, for the younger jazz musicians and fans, is virtually the only local link to the great stars and styles of the past. His preference for the older players is well-known and his knowledge of their work is encyclopedic. That said, his recollections are matter-of-fact and uncluttered by the obstructions of jazz mythology.
"Armstrong came to Dublin in 1956 and I was given the job of looking after him in his dressing room. He was a very different person than the persona he displayed on the stage. I always remember he sat in a very dour manner and as soon as the door was knocked to tell him it was time to go on, he put on the smile. I met him on a number of occasions afterwards in Belfast and New York. Bechet was a snob! I was looking after him in the Ulster Hall and there were a lot of people wanting to come in and see him. He eventually got fed up with this and said he didn't want to see anybody else. But then Viscount Dunluce, now the Earl of Antrim, turned up and he was a great fan of Bechet. I said, look there's somebody else here to see you and once Bechet heard the word `viscount' he said `oh that's different, bring him in!'
"I met Mingus when I went to the Five Spot in New York one St Patrick's Night. I had a long session with him and he was absolutely amazed that his records were being sold in Ireland. He couldn't believe it. He played When Irish Eyes Are Smiling in my honour. Ellington was alright too."
The shop in High Street was in its day an important focus for music fans. It was a place where people would meet, talk and take considerable care over their selections. There were other record outlets but Solly's was the essential source for the hungry collector. In later years he took his educational zeal out of the shop and on to the campus, lecturing for two decades in music appreciation at the College of Art (later the University of Ulster).
"You can't teach anybody how to play jazz but you can teach people how to appreciate it by giving them the background to the thing. If they are receptive enough and they have a musical ear at all, then it is possible to get them to appreciate it. Any art form is difficult to appreciate unless you have a predisposition towards it, but you must set down standards by which it should be judged. What you can do then is develop your interest by listening to people who know more than you do. Then you can define specifically your own likes and dislikes.
"I always remember a quote from Schopenhauer who said `art should be so difficult of comprehension that the amateur cannot touch it'. And I'm an elitist in that sense. I get alarmed when things get too popular. It is not for everyone to appreciate something. That's just a fact of life."
Solly Lipsitz has long been in the vanguard of promoting jazz in Belfast and beyond. His views on the music are strict and doggedly held and this has left him somewhat outside the scene as it has become today. Promoters of what is seen as avant-garde, progressive, experimental or whatever that label might be, will find little comfort in the outspoken views of one of Belfast's very first jazz fans and most senior critic.
"It has become something else now. It might be music but it's not jazz. Put it this way, if you walk along York Street and you cross the road where it intersects with Donegall Street, you're not in York Street any more. And so, there comes a stage that the jazz element becomes so diluted by rock or whatever, that it becomes less and less and becomes infinitesimal. Jazz has now changed as far as I'm concerned, out of all recognition. I agree with Van Morrison, for whom I have a very high regard for his knowledge of jazz. He said that jazz really ended with John Coltrane and I agree with him. John Coltrane was the last one who, as an original player, was sufficiently associated with jazz in its original form."
Solly Lipsitz is now at an age he is unwilling to disclose. His entire life has been devoted to the enjoyment, the study and the promotion of the arts - in particular painting and jazz. And yet he concludes our conversation with what seems an unlikely and sobering observation about his first love: "Jazz is a great part of my life but as an art form we mustn't overrate it. I would put it as a minor art form. I'm not going to compare it with the music of Beethoven or Mozart or Haydn or Schubert.
"This is something against myself but let's put it this way, I would say that Louis Armstrong has had a most profound effect but are you going to tell me that in 200 years Charlie Mingus is likely to be listened to? You might think that he will be listened to in 200 years' time but then who is this article about? Me or you?"