David Evans (musicologist)

David Evans (born January 22, 1944 in Boston , Massachusetts ) is an American blues musician and researcher.

1961 to 1965 he studied linguistics at Harvard University . During his studies he became interested in folk music and began to learn guitar. His interest shifted increasingly to blues and other African American folk music and after graduating from Harvard he enrolled in the Folklore and Mythology program of the University of California at Los Angeles, where he received an MA in 1967 and a Ph.D. in 1976. completed.

From 1965 to the mid-1970s he also conducted field research in the southern states, collecting recordings and interviews that formed the basis of musical and non-fiction publications.

From 1969 Evans taught at the University of California, Los Angeles , and since 1978 he has been a professor at the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music at the University of Memphis , where he established the only ethnomusicology course with a focus on folk and popular music in the American southern states .

His best-known book publications are Tommy Johnson from 1971 as well as a biographical essay about Charley Patton in 1987, which was slightly revised and re-published in 2001 in the material volume of the Charley Patton Works Edition and for which he received the Grammy for Best Album Notes in 2003 . His study "Big Road Blues" from 1982 was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame (Classics of Blues Literature) in 1991.

In 1979 Evans founded the High Water Recording Company .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Blues Hall of Fame ( Memento of the original from August 22, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  

Web links

• David Evans on the University of Memphis website
• Interview by Rob Hutten on BluesNet, 1996