Jerry Coker

Jerry Coker (born November 28, 1932) is an American jazz saxophonist and pedagogue.

Coker was born in South Bend, Indiana. He attended Indiana University in the early 1950s, but left school to become a member of Woody Herman's Herd. 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 he began teaching and increasingly turned to music education and composition. He has taught at Duke University, University of Miami, North Texas State University, and the University of Tennessee, where he was a professor of music in the 2000s.^[1]

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)

Bibliography

• Improvising Jazz (1964/ rev. ed. 1986)
• Patterns for Jazz (c1970)
• The Jazz Idiom (1975)
• Listening to Jazz (c1978; rev. as How to Listen to Jazz, n.p., n.d.)
• The Complete Method for Improvisation (c1980)
• Jerry Coker’s Jazz Keyboard (c1984)
• The Teaching of Jazz (1989)
• How to Practice Jazz (c1990)
• Elements of the Jazz Language for the Developing Improviser (1991)

References