Jerry Coker

Jerry Coker (November 28, 1932 – January 14, 2024) was an American jazz saxophonist and pedagogue.

Coker was born in South Bend, Indiana. He attended Indiana University in the early 1950s, but interrupted his studies in 1953 when Woody Herman offered him a job in "The Herd". Coker eventually earned undergraduate and graduate degrees while he taught jazz at Sam Houston State University (then Sam Houston State Teachers College). He recorded under his own name in the mid-1950s and as a sideman with Nat Pierce, Dick Collins, and Mel Lewis; later that decade he played with Stan Kenton.

In 1960 Coker began teaching and increasingly turned to music education and composition. He taught at Duke University, University of Miami (where he created one of the first jazz degree programs in the country at the Frost School of Music), North Texas State University, and started the Studio Music and Jazz program at the University of Tennessee, where he was a professor of music from the 1980s through the 2000s. Notable students include Randy Brecker and Pat Metheny. Viewing the study of jazz as requiring well-roundedness and practiced familiarity, Coker's recommends open ended explorations by a student in fields of jazz history, familiarity with their instrument, jazz keyboard, and jazz musical theory, often interrelating the contents of his books.

Discography Modern Music from Indiana University (Fantasy Records, 1956) Intro to Jazz, with the Rudy Salvini Big Band (Jazz Records, 1957) Extension, with the Clare Fischer Orchestra (Discovery Records, 1984) ...A Re-Emergence, with the Frank Sullivan Trio (Revelation, 1984) Rebirth (Revelation, 1987)