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You searched for: Creator Hilliard, Emily Remove constraint Creator: Hilliard, Emily Date 2016-10-27 Remove constraint Date: 2016-10-27 Subject Working class--Songs and music Remove constraint Subject: Working class--Songs and music

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["Elaine (Moore) Purkey was an activist songwriter and musician from Harts Creek, West Virginia in Lincoln County. She was born in 1949, on the same piece of property where she lived when she died in 2020. She was raised in a family of musicians and flatfoot dancers and attributed her powerful voice to the acapella singing she learned as a member of the Church of Christ. As a teenager she played in bands with her brother, and in early adulthood she was the lead singer of a local country band. In the 1980s, she began performing regularly on the Wallace Horn Friendly Neighbors Show, a live radio program out of Logan County that has been on the air since 1967. She eventually became the host of the show. Read state folklorist Emily Hilliard's tribute to Purkey: https://wvfolklife.org/2020/09/03/a-tribute-to-west-virginia-labor-singer-songwriter-elaine-purkey-1949-2020/"]