David Evans is an ethnomusicologist and director of the Ethnomusicology/Regional Studies program at the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music in the University of Memphis, where he has worked since 1978.

As head of the university’s High Water Recording Company, he made numerous recordings of performers in the Memphis area, some of whom were not previously documented. He has written or edited a number of books on the blues, alongside music releases’ liner notes and booklets. He won a Grammy in 2003 for “Best Album Notes” for the CD Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues: The Worlds of Charley Patton.