While production manager Matt Liddy was rewinding history and searching through archives of grainy footage and kids hanging around outside a school, he found something incredible. A true gem. When you watch the news piece (about a teacher’s strike at the time), you wouldn’t think that tucked inside the 13-minute reel from April 1970 was the very first footage of a very young Prince Rogers Nelson. That shy little boy nicknamed Skipper would go on to become one of the biggest and most secretive music legends of all time.
Who would have thought that so many years after he died, the world would still be shocked by footage of Prince? But here we are. And surprisingly, this footage doesn’t come from his own vault. Instead, it sat buried in the WCCO archives for 52 years before recently resurfacing.
In the clip, we see a reporter interviewing a group of school kids during the Minneapolis teachers’ strike. One boy, around 10 or 11, speaks with a calm confidence. But he looks incredibly familiar. “I think they should get a better education too… and get some more money cause they work… they be working extra hours for us,” he says, smiling while his friends crowd around him.
While there wasn’t lower thirds or mentions of his name, it’s clear as day that this is The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, or just Prince as he became known as again in later years.
But the team didn’t just jump to conclusions. They went digging to find the identity of the boy and to see if their suspicions were correct. Another boy in the clip introduces himself as Ronnie Kitchen. That bit of information led them to the truth. A yearbook photo of Prince showed that the little boy looked exactly like Prince. Same hair. Same face. Same smile.
Even Kristen Zschomler, a historian who has spent years mapping Prince’s early life in Minneapolis, believed it was him. “I think that’s him, definitely.”
The footage appears to be outside Lincoln Junior High School, where Prince would have been a student in April 1970.
Then the producers took the footage to Terrance Jackson, who grew up with Prince and played in his early band Grand Central. His reaction was priceless. “That is Prince… that’s Skipper!” he said, wiping tears from his eyes.
Long before Purple Rain, before the Super Bowl performance, before the high heels and the splits, he was just a kid in Minneapolis who really loved music. Jackson and his wife remember it clearly. While other “normal” kids played sports, they competed with instruments. And he was the best of them.
In fact, many believe that Prince wrote his very first song at the age of 7. And by the time he was a teen, he was already mastering instruments and writing some of his big hits.
This is the same young boy who would grow up to sell millions of records and win Grammys and Oscars.
Prince died in 2016 at age 57, found at his Paisley Park Studios in Minnesota. It’s been ten years already but he’s still surprising fans with new music, unseen footage and a few more secrets and surprises.
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