Lipskin has been playing Harlem stride piano in the style of Fats Waller and other masters of the genre since his high school days back in New York.
He has played it in Carnegie Hall, at the Newport Jazz Festival, on records and in films. When he is not on tour he plays it in San Francisco, from 5 to 8 p.m. on Wednesdays at the House of Shields and from 8 to 11 p.m. Thursdays at Moose’s in North Beach.
During the upcoming San Francisco Jazz Festival, which begins Wednesday, Oct. 23, he will perform in the fourth Stride Summit, along with Dick Hyman, his friend of 33 years, as well as Ralph Sutton, Jay Mcshann, Al Casey and Doc Ceatham. The concert is set for Friday evening, Oct. 25 at Masonic Auditorium.
Three previous Stride Summits, all under Lipskin’s artistic direction, were held in Davies Symphony Hall in 1988, 1990 and 1993.
If Harlem stride seems an unusual occupation for a white Jewish boy from New York, consider Lipskin an unusual man.
His early years in New York were spent as a staff producer for RCA Records. The production and engineering skills he gained at RCA have paid off in the recordings he makes for his own Buskirk Productions. The latest is “Joys of Harlem Piano.”
Lipskin first came to the Bay Area in 1978 with the Jefferson Airplane and returned a few years later for good. Now 53, he enrolled in law school at the age of 42.
“I became a lawyer because I was bored,” he said. “Music predominately only uses one part of your brain and there are other things going on up there.
“Also, I’m one of the few people who actually enjoyed law school.”
Although he continues to handle entertainment, intellectual property and other civil law cases, he has less and less time for it these days.
At the time of the interview, he was just off the plane after a five-week, 22-event tour of Germany, Switzerland and France, which revealed some differences between European and U.S. audiences.
“If you play restaurants and lounges here, you’re mostly background music,” he said. “Not like in Europe, where they really listen.”
Nevertheless, stride piano, he said, has a “small but very intensely devoted following” on both sides of the Atlantic.
Lipskin himself became devoted to the style as a small child, listening to his father’s Fats Waller records. Lawrence Lipskin was a labor organizer and journalist who translated “The American Jewish Folklore Book” into English.
He was not religious, however, and neither is his son.
“My father was pretty left-wing and used to lecture me on rabbis who supported the Vietnam War,” Lipskin recalled.
“To me, what is special about Judaism is the cultural attributes,” he added. “The tradition of nonviolence, temperance in terms of drugs and alcohol, and the tradition of teaching your offspring the value of education.”
He remains nostalgic for the kind of Jewish community in which he was raised.
“Growing up in New York where there are so many different sects, it was a very vibrant world. I sometimes miss that out here. Things are so much more homogenized.”