By Maria Cramer | Matthew Liddy, a production manager at WCCO-TV, a CBS station in Minnesota, was watching footage of a 1970 teachers’ strike in Minneapolis in late February when he saw a familiar face.
On the screen was a boy, 11, in blue ear warmers and a jacket, being interviewed by one of the station’s reporters and giving a sidelong look and a sly half grin.
“It has to be Prince,” Mr. Liddy recalled saying to himself.
That hunch led to a five-week investigation by producers and reporters, who verified that the boy in the clip was in fact Prince, the music legend and celebrated son of Minneapolis who died on April 21, 2016, at age 57.
Long before “Purple Rain” and “Little Red Corvette” made him an international star, Prince Nelson is seen in the footage, just another kid in the crowd, supporting labor rights and hamming it up for the local television station.
“Are most of the kids in favor of the picketing?” a reporter, Quent Neufeld, asks.
“Yup,” Prince replies, adding, “I think they should get some more money” because they’re “working extra hours for us and all that stuff.”
The interview lasts less than 20 seconds but the footage has elicited glee from musicians like Questlove and Sheila E, a frequent Prince collaborator, and has captivated Minnesotans and Prince fans and scholars.
“As an artifact, it’s absolutely extraordinary,” said Anil Dash, a technology executive and Prince scholar in New York. “You don’t even hope to find that kind of thing.”
“I cried,” said Zaheer Ali, a Prince historian and executive director of the Hutchins Institute for Social Justice at the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, where he is developing a digital interactive platform that will focus on Prince’s work and upbringing.
“That little boy is standing there, maybe thinking this was the most famous he would ever be, talking to that reporter,” Mr. Ali said. “And think about all the potential he had bottled up inside him.”
Prince’s Legacy on Music
The songwriter, singer, musician, producer and consummate showman, who died in 2016, left an indelible mark with his ever-evolving artistic output.
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“I was shocked to learn that I had ever been in Prince’s presence, let alone spoken to him,” Mr. Neufeld, 82, wrote in an email. “Not in my wildest dreams would I have ever thought I had interviewed him.”
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Read the full, very informative article here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/07/us/prince-1970-teachers-strike-wcco.html
Thanks to Pocket for passing this article along.
April 14, 2022| Interesting Bits| Barb Dye