DAVID EVANS

Narrative Vita

                As a student of Classical languages at Harvard University (1961-65), Evans became interested in American folk music by listening to recordings and hearing traditional performers at coffee houses and concerts. He soon began learning guitar and performing in coffee houses. His interest in folk music gravitated toward blues and African American folk music, and he began interviewing folk blues performers who came through Cambridge on tours.

                After graduation from Harvard, Evans enrolled in the Folklore and Mythology graduate program at the University of California, Los Angeles, receiving the M.A. degree in 1967 and the Ph.D. in 1976. Beginning in 1965, he did fieldwork in southern states for periods of several weeks at a time over the next dozen years, collecting hundreds of hours of recordings and interviews that have resulted in many publications and record albums of blues and other types of African American folk music. He has also compiled over the years a record collection of 78’s, 45’s, LP’s, and CD’s of folk, popular, and ethnic music that comprises over thirty thousand items.

                Evans began teaching in the Anthropology Department at California State University, Fullerton, in 1969. In 1978 he joined the faculty at Memphis State University (now The University of Memphis) and has since then been Professor of Music there. He designed and has directed the ethnomusicology Ph.D. program, the only doctoral program with a specific specialization in Southern U.S. folk and popular music. He also launched the university’s High Water Recording Company, which has produced a series of records of local blues and gospel performers.

                He is the author of Tommy Johnson (London: Studio Vista, 1971), a study of the life and music of a folk blues singer, and Big Road Blues: Tradition and Creativity in the Folk Blues (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982; paperback reprint, 1987), both based upon his fieldwork. More recently, he has authored (with John Minton) “The Coon in the Box”: A Global Folktale in African-American Tradition (Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2001) and The NPR Curious Listener’s Guide to Blues (New York: Perigee, 2005). Evans has also written many journal articles and book chapters on various aspects of blues, African American folk music, and musical instruments, including major biographical studies of Bukka White, Charley Patton, and Blind Willie McTell. Evans has also contributed many entries to encyclopedias, dictionaries, and handbooks, including The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, International Dictionary of Black Composers, Encyclopedia of American Folklore, Handbook of American Folklore, The Blackwell Guide to Blues Records, American National Biography, Black Women in America, The Blues: A Bibliographical Guide, Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, American Musical Traditions, The Cambridge Companion to Blues and Gospel Music, Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, and Encyclopedia of African American Folklore.

                He has produced over thirty-five LP’s and CD’s of field and studio recordings and has written liner and booklet notes for over eighty others. Evans is also the editor for the “American Made Music” series of books for the University Press of Mississippi and the “Deep River of Song” series of CD’s for Rounder Records of field recordings of African American folk music by John and Alan Lomax. Evans has lectured throughout the United States and in thirteen foreign countries. He has been a consultant for a number of museums, exhibits, programs, festivals, radio, television, film, and video productions.

                Evans has been a performer (blues vocal and guitar) since the 1960s and has played at concerts and festivals throughout the United States and toured as a solo performer and/or accompanist in eighteen countries of Europe and South America. He has performed and/or recorded with Alan Wilson (later of Canned Heat), Van Zula Hunt, Hammie Nixon, Jessie Mae Hemphill, Johnny Shines, and Robert Belfour. In Memphis and the Mid-South he performs with the Last Chance Jug Band and recorded a CD with them in 1997. He also recorded the solo CD Match Box Blues in 2002. Most of his style and repertoire were learned from artists with whom he has been associated through fieldwork and touring.

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