Evans told interviewer Brian Hennessy (Published after his death), "George would call out the changes for me without ever suggesting that I should have learned them for myself. Finally, instead of thinking of them as isolated changes, I worked out a system upon which traditional theory is based and I gradually began to understand how the music was put together" (Jazz Journal, March 1985). .
In 1946 at the age of seventeen Evans began a four-year undergraduate course at Southeastern Louisiana College (SLC) that fall. He studied the major of music education and piano studies under the Music Department head, Dr. Ralph R. Pottle (Pottle's son, Ralph jr., was Evans room-mate). Evans kept himself busy throughout college gigging regularly with a small-time collegiate trio in New Orleans as well as the surrounding areas. Recalling years later, Evans stated, "There was a kind of freedom there, different from anything in the North. The intercourse between the Negro and the white was friendly, even intimate" (Down Beat December 8th 1960). A musician is influenced by hundreds of people and things, and they all show up in their work. Evans was showing this to be true as the New Orleans jazz aria pulled his enquiring mind and free spirit in. .
Evans graduated from SLC in April of 1950 ready to enter the world of professional music. He gained his first professional experience after settling back in New Jersey/New York State area. He contacted guitarist Mundell Lowe, who had seen him play in Missouri and told him to look him up in New York. The two and bassist Red Mitchell created a trio that was short-lived due to the lack of gigs. Evans, desperate to make an income for him, took jobs outside of jazz altogether. He played at weddings, bar mitzvahs and the likes. His big break at the time was playing piano in the semi-R&B band of saxophonist Herbie Fields. With this band Evans experienced much of the same ambivalence towards R&B as many jazz musicians of the time.
