Mystic Avenue: December 2018

Long time Van fan & owner of the Vanmobile, Al Bodkin, has the story of an important influence in Van's early years in Belfast. Below is Al's research on Solly Lipsitz & his influence on Belfast's music scene.

A short story about Van Morrison, the owner of 'Atlantic Records', two poets & an artist

As you do on a dreich miserable dark rainy day in Northern Ireland I was doing a bit of research about 'Doctor Jazz' Solly Lipsitz and his record shop called 'Atlantic Records' at number 69 High Street, Belfast (before the other Atlantic Records!). The reason of course I am interested in Solly and 'Atlantic Records', which specialised in jazz and blues records, is this was where Van's father George Ivan Morrison senior and later Van himself bought the American record imports that were to greatly influence Van's own music and song writing. Walter Love, BBC Radio Ulster presenter, in his tribute to Solly Lipsitz wrote, "Atlantic Records was not just a record shop. It was to become throughout the 1950's and into the 60's, a gathering place and a debating chamber". Solly said in an interview, "Van's father used to come in every Saturday. He was more interested in the blues side of things - Howlin' Wolf and Little Brother Montgomery. I remember Van very well in a grey school cap" - what a wonderful image! In addition, like Van's father, Solly had also worked in his early years as a fitter in the shipyard Harland and Wolff, which he described as the "university of life".

Van Morrison when talking about his father to The Guardian newspaper said, "He had Lead Belly records when I was very young ... He had been in the States before that, and he turned me on to the music with his record collection. He used to take me to this record shop every Saturday when I was a kid. Atlantic Records, on the High Street in Belfast. Solly Lipsitz was the guy who ran it. His sister lived in New York and he was importing records from there. To me this was normal, being round people who were listening to jazz and blues. I didn't know until later on that was fairly unique. Apparently. There wasn't any name for these type of people. They weren’t hippies or bohemians. They were just … more like communists, is the only way I can describe it! They would be leftfield. These were all friends of my dad".

From about 1950 onwards number 69 High Street housed multiple businesses with 'Atlantic Records' first appearing in the 1954 Belfast street directory; the last mention was in 1974. From 1975, businesses started to move out and by 1976 the site was listed as vacant. The whole area between Pottinger's Entry and Church Lane was then used as a car park in the late 70's. The present Hi-Park Centre was built on the site circa 1987. When looking at the old maps number 69 was just about half-way way down between Pottinger's Entry and Church Lane, which would have put it where the present day Lidl store is located.

1954 Belfast Street Directory showing number 69 High Street, Belfast and 'Atlantic Records'

Present day photograph showing where 'Atlantic Records' was located and is now a Lidl store with a view looking towards the Albert Memorial Clock and east Belfast.

When Solly died in 2013 aged 92 years old Van attended his funeral and said, "It's very sad, Solly was like a family friend. My father used to take me to Atlantic Records every Saturday afternoon when I was just a kid. Solly was a key influential person in Belfast for getting the music here. Luckily I got to spend a lot of nice times with him in the last year". Along with Van there were over 100 mourners at Solly's funeral including the poet Michael Longley and the artist Neil Shawcross.

Van Morrison at the Jewish section of Carnmoney Cemetery in Newtownabbey for the funeral of Solly Lipsitz

This is how Michael Longley described the Atlantic Records shop as only a wordsmith could do through his perceptive observations, "One of the most magical rooms I have ever entered was a dusty cubbyhole at the end of a corridor off Belfast’s High Street: Atlantic Records, windowless, smelling of cigar smoke and freshly opened record sleeves, the den of Ulster’s Doctor Jazz, the legendary Solly Lipsitz. My twin brother, Peter, and I went there in the mid-1950s when we were 16 or so. Schoolmasterly, unimpressed by our musical tastes, Solly recommended Louis Armstrong and His All Stars Play W C Handy. We bought it, and I was partially hooked. The pennies didn’t fully drop until some years later when, newly married, I bought from Solly a double album, Fats on the Air, a scintillating compilation of Fats Waller’s radio broadcasts. Thus began my adoration of Waller and jazz piano, especially stride and boogie-woogie. More crucially, jazz set going my lifelong friendship with Solly Lipsitz".

Michael Longley goes on to talk about his love of Fats Waller and mentions 'Atlantic Records' once more in a Guardian newspaper article from 2011, "In the first year of my marriage I discovered a dusty cubby-hole off Belfast's High Street – Atlantic Records. My first purchases were Fats on the Air, two LP recordings of Waller's effervescent radio broadcasts. The great stride pianist soon became a constant presence in our flat, quotidian and yet extraordinary, a kind of muse. In my first collection there's a poem called "Elegy for Fats Waller" in which my hero metamorphoses into the Sheikh of Araby (one of his numbers): "Across the deserts of the blues a trail / He blazes, towards the one true mirage, / Enormous on a nimble-footed camel / And almost refusing to be his age." I adore the drive, the warmth, the apparent spontaneity, the dizzy humour, the hilarious demolition of sentimental material".

Solly Lipsitz was one of the few music critics Van Morrison respected and he is credited for the sleeve notes in a couple of his later albums 'Magic Time' and 'Born to Sing: No Plan B'. Solly had a reputation for speaking his mind and would make it abundantly clear if an artist or a piece of music was not to his taste. Van said of him, "I had a high regard for the man. He was a music critic who actually made music."

There is quite a bit about Solly on-line so I won't repeat it all but I did find a few other things that were new to me and might interest you as well. As I am well used to research, especially genealogical and historical research, you sometimes need to delve into alternative archives to find other material not generally known.

From Michael Longley's 'A Perpetual One-Night Stand: Some Thoughts on Jazz and Poetry' published in 'Writing Ulster' (Number 5) 1998, pages 91-9, Michael stated that, "Atlantic Records sported no shop front" and this got me thinking about the shop itself. So I looked up the 1960 Lennon Wylie Belfast Street Directory. I found that at number 69 High Street there were several businesses at the same address such as a television engineer, a school of ballroom dancing, a diamond dealer, a wholesale jeweller, a financier, a Friendly Society, a film distributor and 'Atlantic Records' itself being described in the street directory as 'Connoisseurs' Gramophone Records'. I think Van's father would be very pleased to have been called a connoisseur and it is a well deserved accolade.

From that I found another amazing connection between Solly Lipsitz, 'Atlantic Records' and another of our well known Northern Irish poets - Seamus Heaney. In the National Library of Ireland, Department of Manuscripts archive, I came across a poem written by Seamus Heaney in 1968 called 'Undine' with an interesting hand-written inscription by Heaney, "For Solly 15th April 1968" with a printed letterhead of 'Atlantic Records' of 69 High Street, Belfast. I cannot ever think of seeing any other archive material from 'Atlantic Records' before now. In fact, even a friend of a friend of mine, who is librarian and researcher from Belfast, could find no references or material from 'Atlantic Records' apart from in street directories. In addition, no contemporary photographs of the store front could either be found.

At the foot of the sheet Heaney also wrote the following for Solly, 'With gratitude to one of the most obviously hospitable hosts in the world. Seamus". You will see from the letterhead below that actually the building that housed Solly's record store on High Street was called Atlantic House and one of the less obvious reasons why it was called 'Atlantic Records'.

Solly was an avid book collector and in fact he had many Seamus Heaney first editions. A 1980 Faber & Faber first edition, first printing of 'Preoccupations' in good condition is now worth £90 which is a bit more than my 1984 edition that I obtained from Ebay for £3.31 including postage! What I had not known before was that in the late 1960's and early 1970's Seamus Heaney lived at 16 Ashley Avenue, just off the Lisburn Road, (house now demolished) with his next-door neighbour living at number 18 being Solly Lipsitz!!

The inspiration of the poem 'Undine' itself came from the "old spongy growth from a drain between two fields" which Heaney once saw a man clearing out and inspired him to write the poem as spoken by the freed water personified as a nympha poem which is entirely made up of one prolonged sexual metaphor.

Earlier I had mentioned that artist Neil Shawcross attended Solly's funeral. Solly also possessed a stupendous collection of Irish art including a fine array by Neil Shawcross. Shawcross, English by birth, arrived in Belfast in 1962 and after this amount of time living across here is now considered Irish. Shawcross is a deft colourist (shades of Matisse) and portraitist who has captured Lipsitz, Heaney and Longley in paintings and thus neatly ties in the whole story with four of the 'actors' within this story. The other 'actor' Van Morrison, as far as I am aware, has never been painted by a famous artist such as Shawcross...as to the reasons why not - we can all surmise!
Finally, from W B Yeats to Patrick Kavanagh, and beyond, Van has always had a love of Irish poets so I sent him a framed copy of the Seamus Heaney poem and I'm sure seeing the inscription to Solly Lipsitz and the 'Atlantic Records' letterhead will remind him of being 'in another time, and in another place' in that dusty cubbyhole record shop at 69 High Street, Belfast.