JACKSON: MS Dept of Archives and History w/David Evans “Adventures in Blues Fieldwork in the 1960s”

From the Mississippi Department of Archives and History’s History Is Lunch:

Join us on site at noon on Wednesday, February 28, for History Is Lunch or watch the livestream when David Evans will present “Adventures in Blues Fieldwork in the 1960s.”

At the height of the blues revival, David Evans and his UCLA classmate Marina Bokelman twice traveled to Mississippi and Louisiana to do fieldwork for their graduate studies. While there, they made recordings and interviews and took extensive field notes and photographs of blues musicians and their families. The pair encountered many obscure but no less important musicians as well as blues legends such as Mississippi Fred McDowell, Babe Stovall, Reverend Ruben Lacy, and Jack Owens.

The materials produced in those trips form the contents of Evans and Bokelman’s new book Going Up the Country: Adventures in Blues Fieldwork in the 1960s. The book features over one hundred documentary photographs that depict the field recording sessions and the activities, lives, and living conditions of the artists and their families.

William Ferris, author of Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues, wrote of Going Up the Country, “This is a monumental work that plunges the reader into the sixties through the blues culture of the Deep South. It is a deeply American tale of discovery, sadness, and celebration that truly touches the heart.”

David Evans earned his BA in classical languages from Harvard University and his MA and PhD in folklore and mythology from the University of California, Los Angeles. Evans taught at California State University, Fullerton, and the University of Memphis, where he retired as professor of music emeritus. He is the author of Tommy Johnson, a study of the life and music of the Mississippi folk blues singer, and Big Road Blues: Tradition and Creativity in the Folk Blues, both based on his fieldwork. Evans has produced more than fifty LPs and CDs of field and studio recordings and received Grammy awards for best album notes in 2003 and 2019. A blues vocal and guitar performer since the 1960, Evans has played at concerts and festivals throughout the United States and toured as a solo performer or accompanist in twenty-two countries.

Copies of Going Up the Country will be for sale at the program.

History Is Lunch is a weekly lecture series of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History that explores all aspects of the state’s past. The hour-long programs are held in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum building at 222 North Street in Jackson and livestreamed on YouTube and Facebook.