William Gottlieb

William P. Gottlieb
Gottlieb at WINX radio station, Washington, circa 1940
Born	William Paul Gottlieb January 28, 1917 Brooklyn
Died	April 23, 2006(2006-04-23) (aged 89) Great Neck, New York
Cause of death	following a stroke
Nationality	American
Children	Steven, Richard, Andrew, Nicholas

William Paul Gottlieb (January 28, 1917 – April 23, 2006) was an American photographer and newspaper columnist who is best known for his classic photographs of the leading performers of the "Golden Age" of American jazz in the 1930s and 1940s. Gottlieb's photographs are among the best known and widely reproduced images of this era of jazz.

During the course of his career, Gottlieb took portraits of hundreds of prominent jazz musicians and personalities, typically while they were playing or singing at well-known New York City jazz clubs. Well-known musicians Gottlieb photographed included Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Hines, Jo Stafford, Thelonious Monk, Stan Kenton, Ray McKinley, Benny Goodman, Coleman Hawkins, Louis Jordan, Ella Fitzgerald and Benny Carter.

Gottlieb was born on January 28, 1917 in the Canarsie neighborhood of Brooklyn, and he grew up in Bound Brook, New Jersey, where his father was in the building and lumber business. He graduated from Lehigh University in 1938, with a degree in economics. While at Lehigh, Gottlieb wrote for the weekly campus newspaper and became editor-in-chief of The Lehigh Review. In his last year of college, he began writing a weekly jazz column for The Washington Post. After the Post decided that it could not afford to pay a photographer to shoot photos for Gottlieb's jazz column, Gottlieb bought his own press camera and began taking pictures for his column.