Writing in 1945, Willis Laurence James recalled giving a lecture demonstration attended by Eubie Blake:
I sang a florid Negro cry. Eubie Blake leaped halfway from his seat and yelled “Oh, professor, professor, you hit me, you hit me!”
He placed both hands over his heart and continued with great emotion: “You make me think of my dear mother. She always sang like that. I can hear her now. Thaťs the stuff I was raised on.” He sat down quietly, except for a deep sigh that had no audible competition from anyone.
Blake was a living testimony to the influences that had made him musically unique even without formal training (which he did not acquire until he was old and famous and did not really need it). He knew all along that it was the cry that had guided him.
Quoted from “Cries in speech and song” by Willis Laurence James (Black sacred music IX/1–2 [1995] pp. 16–34).
Above, an undated photograph of Blake from the Maryland Historical Society; below, James demonstrates two florid cries.
