Ira Gitler (December 18, 1928 – February 23, 2019) was an Americanjazz historian and journalist. The co-author ofThe Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz withLeonard Feather—the most recent edition appeared in 1999—he wrote hundreds of liner notes for jazz recordings beginning in the early 1950s and wrote several books about jazz andice hockey, two of his passions.^[1]

Gitler was born atBrooklyn,New York into a Jewish family and grew up listening toswing bands in the late 1930s and 1940s, before discovering the new music ofCharlie Parker andDizzy Gillespie. In the early 1950s, he worked as a producer of recording sessions for thePrestige label. He is credited with coining the term "sheets of sound" in the late 1950s, to describe the playing ofJohn Coltrane.^[2]

Gitler was the New York editor ofDown Beat magazine during the 1960s and wrote forMetronome Magazine,JazzTimes,Jazz Improv,Modern Drummer,The New York Times, theSan Francisco Chronicle, theVillage Voice,Vibe,Playboy,World Monitor, andNew York magazine. Internationally, he contributed toSwing Journal (Japan),Musica Jazz (Italy) andJazz Magazine (France). He was awarded aGuggenheim Fellowship in 1974.^[1]

Gitler was given Lifetime Achievement Awards by theNew Jersey Jazz Society (in 2001) and by theJazz Journalists Association (in 2002).^[1]

In 2017, Gitler was awarded an NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship.^[3]

Gitler's passion for ice hockey prompted him to write several books on the subject.^[4] He also wrote for theNew York Rangers as well as theNational Hockey League in their former magazine,Goal. He died in New York at the age of 90 on February 23, 2019.^[5]

• Jazz Masters of the Forties; New York: Macmillan, 1966.
• Make the Team in Ice Hockey; New York: Macmillan, 1968.
• Hockey! The Story of the World's Fastest Sport, with Richard Beddoes and Stan Fischler; New York: Macmillan, 1969.
• Blood on the Ice: Hockey's Most Violent Moments; Chicago: H. Regnery Co., 1974.
• The Encyclopedia of Jazz in the Seventies, withLeonard Feather; New York: Horizon Press, 1976.ISBN 0-8180-1215-3.
• Ice Hockey A to Z; New York: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, 1978.ISBN 0-688-41842-2.
• Swing to Bop: An Oral History of the Transition in Jazz in the 1940s; New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.ISBN 0-19-503664-6.
• The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz, with Leonard Feather and the assistance ofSwing journal (Tokyo); New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.ISBN 0-19-507418-1.
• The Masters of Bebop: A Listener's Guide; New York: Da Capo Press, 2001.ISBN 0-306-81009-3.

• 1928 births
• 2019 deaths
• Jewish American journalists
• American music critics
• American music journalists
• Jazz writers
• Writers from Brooklyn
• American sports journalists
• Writers from New York (state)
• Journalists from New York City
• Sportswriters from New York (state)
• 21st-century American Jews
• NEA Jazz Masters

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