Ira Gitler

American jazz journalist and historian, also a writer on ice hockey, born December 18, 1928 in Brooklyn; died February 23, 2019.
Producer for Prestige, writer of about 700 liner notes, and contributor to DownBeat (an editor for the magazine in two periods between 1963 and 1970) and JazzTimes. Originated the term "sheets of sound" to describe the saxophone playing of John Coltrane on "Russian Lullaby" in the liner notes for Coltrane's "Soultrane" album.
With Leonard Feather, as an assistant from 1954, he compiled “The New Encyclopedia of Jazz” (1960) and successor volumes on jazz in the 1960s and 1970s and co-wrote the 1999 edition of the first book (“The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz”). He wrote "Jazz Masters of the 40s” (1966) and “Swing to Bop: An Oral History of the Transition in Jazz in the 1940s” (1985), a compilation of quotes by participants in the evolution of the music during that period.