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I'm not so phenomenal. All I knew at seven years old was that I had to have a means of communication, and somehow drawing on paper, whether it was copying cartoons out of the old Life magazine when it was a cartoon book, copying Patterson cartoons or Harrison Feature covers on the old Cosmopolitan and Redbook magazines, or an old Weindecker cover on I think the Saturday Evening Post, copying all these things.   My father was, at that time my step-father, was a night watchman, and he worked at some mail order house, and so he used to get all kinds of magazines.  And I used to spend endless hours just making copies of the cartoons and everything.  Well, on the level that this was, it was a means of communication.  And in my community in Chicago at that time, communication was real important, particularly for a kid my age who grew up in the poor, poor area.  My father was a night watchman, and my mother was a domestic worker.  In fact, she still is.  And life was pretty raw.  But it was a beautiful period in many respects, because as I reflect on it, it was from the age of seven to the age of fourteen, it was the era of the greatest jazz and the greatest blues songs.  And I used to hear these sounds, you know. Around the house, my mother had an old Victrola, and so I used to listen to Mamie Smith and Bobby Dawes and Jimmy Dawes, and all these great jazz people who lived near at a

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