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Documenary: Ira Gitler Lives!

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The late Ira Gitler was the delicatessen of jazz writers. While most jazz scribes of the 1950s and beyond had a fork-and-knife feel to their prose, Ira's liner notes on the backs of albums and his books were meant to be eaten with both hands. He was the New York cabbie, the cop on the beat, the seltzer delivery man and the construction worker. He was jazz's everyman, and his liner notes always came with a pickle on the side.

Ira and I struck up a friendship after he began emailing me soon after I started JazzWax in 2007. He was encouraging, filled in the blanks on posts and sensed I was old school. He was a walking encyclopedia and an eyewitness to the music I loved. It was an honor to hear from him, given how many of his essays I pored over on the backs of albums since the late 1960s.

His apartment on East 80th was like a Collyer brothers pied-à-terre. Vinyl and CD jazz albums, books and artwork jammed his living space to the point that he knew where stuff was but didn't want to remove the three layers stacked in front to reach them. If you don't already own Swing to Bebop, do yourself a favor and buy it (go here). The oral history is one of jazz's finest books, and you'll love reading how modern jazz evolved in the voices of the artists who made it happen.

Jazz musicians admired Ira for his transparency, his honesty and the directness of his writing. They dug his passion for the music and that he wasn't in the business to look cool or screw them over. Ira didn't see black or white, just art and artists. They also felt a kinship with him since he had been involved in recording sessions from the dawn of the 1950s with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Zoot Sims, Gerry Mulligan, Sonny Rollins and many others. Best of all, Ira's writing was terse, always emotional, rich in his own sound and light on the fancy words and scholarly verbiage. [Photo above of Ira and me at a party celebrating his birthday on December 18, 2008]

Bret Primack, also known as “The Jazz Video Guy," recently put together a documentary on Ira. Fortunately, Bret was able to interview Ira over the years on camera and at his home. [Photo above of Bret and me in November 2008 at Barney Greengrass.

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This story appears courtesy of JazzWax by Marc Myers.
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