Editing David Baker (composer) (section)

===Music educator and author===
Although he began as a performer on trombone and cello, Baker is better known for his fifty-year career as a professor of jazz music and for his published works and musical compositions. Because his facial injury in 1953 largely ended the performing aspect of his career, he returned to his home state of Indiana and began a period of increased interest in musical composition and pedagogy.<ref name=Trombone/><ref name=Wynn/>

In 1966 he began teaching at the Jacobs School of Music of Indiana University, where he established a jazz studies program. He was the music school's second African American faculty member and its sole jazz studies instructor for his first ten years at the school.<ref name=Conversation/><ref name=NYT/> The jazz studies curriculum was approved as a degree program in 1968, a time when only about a dozen American universities taught jazz as an academic discipline.<ref name=Higgins/>

Baker eventually became an IU Distinguished Professor of Music, serving as chair of the Jazz Studies department from 1968 to 2013 and as an adjunct professor in the African American and African Diaspora Studies department.<ref name="IU page"/> His work as an educator helped make IU a highly regarded school for students of jazz. His students included [[Michael Brecker]], [[Randy Brecker]], [[Pharez Whitted]], [[Peter Erskine]], [[Jim Beard]], [[Chris Botti]], [[Shawn Pelton]], [[Jeff Hamilton (drummer)|Jeff Hamilton]], and [[Jamey Aebersold]].<ref name=Higgins/>

Baker was among the first to codify the largely aural tradition of jazz. He is credited with writing 70 books, including several on jazz, such as ''Jazz Styles & Analysis – Trombone: A History of the Jazz Trombone Via Recorded Solos'' (1973), ''Jazz Improvisation'' ( 1988), and ''David Baker's Jazz Pedagogy'' (1989).<ref name=NYT/><ref name=Baker-JI>{{cite book | last =Baker | first =David | title =Jazz Improvisation: A Comprehensive Method for All Musicians | publisher =[[Alfred Publishing]] | year =1988| isbn=0-88284-370-2}}</ref> He is also credited with writing 400 articles.<ref name=Scholarship/>