Jerry Coker

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

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 he began teaching and increasingly turned to music education and composition.