Guitar Evangelist Cora Fluker

Marion, MS 1996

Fluker lived at the end of a dirt cul-de-sac outside Meridian, surrounded by her children and their families. She built herself a small church with scrap building materials next door to her home where, on Sundays, she play repeated phrases on her guitar beneath emotional, spontaneously created songs and preached the word of God. She was equally adept at a traditional vocal technique she called “moaning”—heartfelt testifying sung a cappella and with deeply moving vibrato voicings. This singing style was common in African-American churches in the South until modern hymns began replacing it in the 1940’s.

Cora Fluker "Testimony"