Ira Gitler (December 18, 1928 – February 23, 2019) was an American jazz historian and journalist.
[1] Gitler was born at Brooklyn, New York into a Jewish family and grew up listening to swing bands in the late 1930s and 1940s, before discovering the new music of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.
He is credited with coining the term "sheets of sound" in the late 1950s, to describe the playing of John Coltrane.
[3] Gitler's passion for ice hockey prompted him to write several books on the subject.
[4] He also wrote for the New York Rangers as well as the National Hockey League in their former magazine, Goal.