Elma Ney McClure represents yet another example of a female composer with a great deal of promise that was sadly unrealized. She was born in 1881 in Shelby County, Tennessee, to Bavarian immigrant saloon keeper Jacob Ney (erroneously spelled Kney in the 1900 census) and his Missouri wife Christina Houser. She was the youngest of seven siblings including her older brothers Charles (9/1864), Frederick Arthur (6/3/1867), Albert (1869) and Amile (7/28/1875). Jacob was probably fairly well off as he was running a saloon in the 1880s and 1890s. The 1880 census showed both Charles and Frederick working in the saloon for their father. The family employed one or more housekeeper/cooks in the late 1890s and later.

As of the 1900 enumeration the family was living in Memphis, Tennessee, with Charles working as a music clerk, Fred as a dry goods clerk, and Amile having entered local politics in his early twenties. Albert had died by that time. Elma dove into the music field in the early 1900s teaching piano, and was soon working for the O. K. Houck Piano Company in Memphis, likely as a sheet music demonstrator and sales clerk. Also working there at the same time was fellow female composer and pianist Geraldine Dobyns.

At some point in between 1903 and 1905 Elma was married and McClure was added to her name. The most likely candidate for her short-term husband was Charles McClure who worked as a packer at the same place as her brother Fred, B. Lowenstein and Brothers. However, by the time of the 1907 city directory she was back living with her widowed mother and brother Fred, listed as a music teacher. This was echoed in the 1910 enumeration taken in Memphis when she showed her marital status as divorced. Her single composition, The Cutter: A Classy Rag, was published by Houck. The title may refer to either a cutting contest, common in those times, or perhaps cutting the rug. Neither seems to fit the gentle nature of this beautiful and effusive work.

From 1907 through at least 1912 Elma was listed as a music teacher in the Memphis city directories, and Fred as a manager/buyer at B. Lowenstein and Brothers. After 1912 the family appears to almost drop off, with only Amil as Albert Emil in the 1918 draft, working now for the Iron Mountain Railway. Fred shows up in the 1920 census as an inmate at the Home for Incurables in Memphis for an undisclosed ailment. It appears that either the remainder of the family perished in the 1910s or they changed their family name.

The trail for Elma led to a probable 1914 or 1915 marriage to salesman Rex Greenman Lane from Wisconsin. They resided in the Chicago, Illinois, area, but were divorced by 1918. Rex died on January 13, 1920 at age 35. Elma returned to Memphis, albeit not to family, and spent the better part of the next three decades teaching piano there. She appeared in Memphis directories as Rex's widow, despite their divorced status on his death certificate, into 1960, and as a music teacher, and even musician and accompanist, from the mid-1920s to the mid-1940s. The 1943 Memphis listing inadvertently used Elma Ney instead of Lane, thus the verification of the connection. Elma remained in Memphis to the time of her death in 1967 at age 85.