Biography
Gottlieb was born on January 28, 1917 in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn and grew up in Bound Brook, New Jersey, where his father worked in the construction and lumber trades. 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 senior year of college, he began writing a weekly jazz column for The Washington Post. While writing for the Post, Gottlieb taught economics at the University of Maryland. After the Post determined that it would not pay a photographer to accompany Gottlieb's visits to jazz clubs, Gottlieb borrowed a press camera and began taking photos for his column. Gottlieb was drafted into the Army Air Corps in 1943 and served as a photography and classification officer. After World War II, Gottlieb moved to New York to pursue a career in journalism. He worked as a writer-photographer for DownBeat magazine and his work also appeared frequently in Record Changer, the Saturday Review and Collier's. In 1948, Gottlieb retired from jazz journalism to spend more time with his wife Delia and the children.
After leaving DownBeat, Gottlieb began working at the educational filmstrip company Curriculum Films. He founded his own filmstrip company, which was later purchased by McGraw Hill. Many of his filmstrips won awards from the Canadian Film Board and the Educational Film Librarians Association. Gottlieb also wrote and illustrated children's books, including several Golden Books such as The Four Seasons, Tigers Adventure and Laddie the Superdog. He also wrote educational books such as Science Facts You Won't Believe and Space Flight.
Gottlieb's wish was that his recordings in the Library of Congress collection be made freely available in the public domain, which the Library of Congress accepted on February 16, 2010.
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