Jim Coffin, who worked for Selmer and Yamaha and was very involved with PAS, died on April 9, 2015.

Born in Waterloo, Iowa in 1931, he received bachelors and masters degrees from what is now the University of Northern Iowa (UNI). After playing professionally in Los Angeles he returned to Iowa and began teaching at Woodward High School in 1956 and Belle Plaine High School in 1959. Coffin joined the UNI faculty in 1964 where he instituted both the jazz and percussion programs. 

In 1972, Jim joined the Selmer Company, where he was the marketing, education, and artist-relations manager for Premier Drums. Ten years later, he joined the Yamaha Corporation and was responsible for the development and marketing of their percussion products until 1993.

Jim is the author of The Performing Percussionist I & II and Solo Album published by C.L. Barnhouse. As a clinician, soloist, adjudicator, and conductor he appeared in 40 states and five Canadian provinces. After retiring from Yamaha he was a contributor to Drum Business magazine; editor of the drumset column in Percussive Notes; a marketing consultant; presenter of music business seminars sponsored by the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) for college and university music majors; Secretary of the PAS Executive Committee; and a published fiction writer. He played on and produced a CD, The Seasons of Our Lives, distributed by Walking Frog Records (Barnhouse); was interim Symphonic Band conductor at Cal State University San Bernadino; and wrote and edited a Sherlockian newsletter. One of his many honors include being noted as an outstanding university jazz educator in Duke Ellington’s autobiography, Music is My Mistress.

In 1999 he received the PAS President’s Industry Award, and in 2005 he received the Outstanding PAS Supporter Award.Jim Coffin reminisces about his time at Yamaha in this excerpt from the NAMM Oral History Project.