*A Minnesota TV station has unearthed archival footage of the late, great music icon Prince at 11 years old.
Staffers at WCCO, a CNN affiliate station in Minneapolis, discovered the footage of young Prince being interviewed about local public school teachers on strike in 1970. The footage was found while reporters were pulling old footage to include in a piece about a recent strike.
In the video, the interviewer asks young Prince if most of the kids gathered at the strike scene were in support of their teachers’ picketing. The future hitmaker replied, “Yup.”
“I think they should get some more money because they work extra hours for us, and all that stuff,” little Prince said in the clip before walking away.
Watch the moment via the video below.
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“I grew up in Minneapolis, so all I cared about was looking at cool old buildings from the place I grew up. Did I recognize my old school? Did I recognize any landmarks?” said CCO Production Manager Matt Liddy.
Liddy was left stunned while watching the archival footage and he saw Prince being interviewed by the reporter.
“I immediately just went out to the newsroom and started showing people and saying, ‘I’m not gonna tell you who I think this is, but who do you think this is?’ And every single person [said] ‘Prince,’” Liddy said.
“We did not get him saying ‘I’m Prince Nelson,’” Liddy said of the old Prince interview.
To confirm the boy’s identity, the station reached out to some of Prince’s old friends and schoolmates, including Terrance Jackson, who’d known the artist since kindergarten. WCCO anchor Jeff Wagner showed Jackson the footage.
“Wow, that was him,” Jackson said of the clip. “I’m totally blown away.”
The WCCO team set out to track down another old school friend of Prince, a man named Ronnie Kitchen who appears in the video as a teenager speaking about the teachers’ strike.
The staffers were also connected with Terrance Jackson, who said he and Prince “go far back as kindergarten at John Hay Elementary in north Minneapolis.”
Jackson was in Prince’s first band, Grand Central, when they were teenagers.
“Oh my God, that’s Kitchen,” Jackson said as he watched the old video, immediately recognizing Ronnie Kitchen, per the report. “That is Prince! Standing right there with the hat on, right? That’s Skipper! Oh my God!”
“I am like blown away. I’m totally blown away,” he said.
“He was already playing guitar and keys by then, phenomenally,” Jackson said of Prince. “Music became our sport. Because he was athletic, I was athletic, but we wanted to compete musically.”
Jackson’s wife Rhoda also reacted to the footage, saying of Prince: “It’s just amazing to see him, that small, that young, and hear his voice.”
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