Album Notes by U of M Professor Among GRAMMY® Nominations
For release: Feb. 5, 2003

University of Memphis music professor David Evans has received a GRAMMY® nomination for his album notes for Screamin' and Hollerin' The Blues: The Worlds of Charley Patton, a seven-CD box set including the works of blues singer and guitarist Charley Patton as well as interviews and recordings of those who knew Patton.

Patton was born in Hinds County, Mississippi in the late 1800s and recorded prolifically after 1929 and established himself as the foremost blues singer in the Mississippi Delta. Dr. Evans, who directs the U of M's Ethnomusicology/Regional Studies doctoral program, received a Ph.D. from U.C.L.A. in 1976 and has studied Patton since the 1960s. "A lot of his songs deal with incidents of his own life," says Dr. Evans. Patton died in 1934 but left a legacy of works that influenced other blues artists.

The Revenant label compiled those works in Screamin' and Hollerin' The Blues: The Worlds of Charley Patton that also is a GRAMMY® contender in the packaging and historical categories. In 2002, the album was winner of the Blues Foundation's Keeping the Blues Alive Award.

Dr. Evans will be at the 45th Annual GRAMMY® Awards show to air Feb. 23 on CBS to see if he is a winner in the "Best Album Notes" category for his essay "Charley Patton: The Conscience of the Delta." In 1980, Dr. Evans received a GRAMMY® nomination for his album notes for Atlanta Blues: 1933. Dr. Evans, a blues musician himself, has produced over thirty albums and compact discs, many of them for University of Memphis' High Water Records.

More News Releases