WCCO unearths incredibly rare footage of Prince as a young boy

have you ever seen prince as a child he's like a mythical creature i mean very few images exist um that is until a stroke of luck led our minneapolis station wcco to unearth an incredible gym wcco anchor jeff wagner joins us right now jeff what did you find well it all started with our production manager matt liddy who went digging deep into these film archives for footage of the 1970 minneapolis teacher strike it was for a story we were working on and he stumbled upon some video in that film you're just gonna have to see it to believe [Music] on a film reel of a teacher strike more than 50 years ago an interview with one student immediately stood out are most of the kids in favor of the picketing yes how come i think they get a better education too cuz and i think they should get some more money because they're going to be working extra hours for us and all that stuff the first thing i thought was i can't believe that's him wcco production manager matt liddy made the discovery i immediately just went out to the newsroom and started showing people and saying i'm not going to tell you who i think this is but who do you think this is and every single person prince yes that prince prince rogers nelson the minneapolis born and bred global superstar but there was one catch we did not get him saying i'm prince nelson so we set out to get some confirmation there's not a ton of images of prince as a kid we asked historian kristen schommler who's extensively researched and written about the purple one to take a look at the footage and well i think that's him definitely oh my gosh and this definitely looks like lincoln junior high school where he would have been attending school in april of 1970. we also compared it to a photo of prince when he was believed to be in the sixth grade despite the evidence we still needed someone who knew prince as a kid to confirm we go back as far as kindergarten and john hale elementary in north minneapolis that someone was terence jackson a childhood friend and neighbor who played in prince's first band grand central when they were teenagers that is friends standing right through the headline right yeah keep watching keep watching that skipper oh my gosh that's him wow that was him what do you i'm like blown away and flabber totally i'm totally blown away mark my words you guys have found a real gem as far as we can tell this video is the oldest video of prince that we can find in the public outside of maybe his personal archive and i think our production manager matt liddy put it best i don't know why this is cool but it is but it is jeff that is a great find and a great story of finding out that yes that is indeed prince did his childhood friend say hey that's skipper is that a new nickname we got there so that's like a family nickname it's it's funny because earlier in the story when we talked with the historian she was showing us a picture of him as a toddler and it was labeled as skipper they used to call him skipper she mentioned to me so to hear him revert back to that nickname immediately just shows you that he wasn't prince the superstar that was his neighborhood friend skipper very cool big shout out to matt liddy yeah good find matt lydia yes little princess on the right side of the teacher strike as well give them more pay more support yes you know the children are our future jim wagner thank you very much wcco we appreciate it

Channel: CBS Mornings

Views: 362,295

Keywords: video, cbs, news, wcco, station, prince, minneapolis, minnesota, jeff wagner, singer, songwriter, luck, rare footage, video footage, child, kid, young, young prince

Id: xoUd3Mm8BpY

Length: 3min 47sec (227 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 04 2022