Ira Gitler

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Ira Gitler (born December 18, 1928 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American jazz historian and journalist.

Gitler grew up listening to swing bands in the late 1930s and 1940s before discovering the new music of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.[1] He has written hundreds of liner notes of Jazz recordings since the early 1950s. [2]

He coined the term "sheets of sound" to describe the playing of John Coltrane in the late 1950's.[3]

Gitler was the New York editor of Down Beat magazine during the 1960's and has written for Metronome, JazzTimes, Jazz Improv, Modern Drummer, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Village Voice, Vibe, Playboy, World Monitor, and New York magazine. Internationally he has contributed to the magazines Swing Journal (Japan), Musica Jazz (Italy) and Jazz Magazine (France). [4]. [5] [6]

He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974. [7]

Mr. Gitler was given Lifetime Achievement Awards by the New Jersey Jazz Society in 2001, and by the Jazz Journalists Association in 2002. [8]

Additionally, Ira Gitler has written several books about ice hockey, and wrote for the New York Rangers program as well as Goal, the former National Hockey League magazine.

[edit] Books

  • "Jazz Masters of the '40s" (1966)
  • "Hockey! The Story of the World's Fasted Sport" with Beddoes and Fischler (1969)
  • "Make the Team in Ice Hockey" (1971)
  • "Blood on the Ice: Hockey's Most Violent Moments" (1974)
  • "The Encyclopedia of Jazz in the Seventies" With Leonard Feather (1976)
  • "Ice Hockey A to Z" (1978)
  • "Swing to Bop" (1985)
  • "The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz" with Leonard Feather (1999)
  • "The Masters of Bebop: A Listener's Guide" (2001)
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