An incredible piece of lost TV footage of Prince at age 11 has surfaced. The clip is from April 1970, and it shows a reporter at WCCO asking young Prince what he thinks of the picket lines outside school. The kid was rocking a winter hat and that same sly smile the world would come to know years later.
WCCO unfortunately had no way to confirm that it was Prince from the video because the reporter didn’t ask for his name so they turned to Prince historian Kristen Zschomler, who was overwhelmed with excitement when she first saw the clip. She confirmed that it was indeed Prince standing outside his old Lincoln Junior High School and she says footage of Prince as a child is super rare.
In order for WCCO to officially confirm that the boy in the video was Prince they had to reach out to someone who knew him as a child so, they reached out to Terrance Jackson who was a childhood friend and former neighbor who was also in Prince’s first band, Grand Central, when they were teenagers!
PRINCE AT AGE 11: WCCO stumbled upon a priceless film in our archives while looking through footage of the 1970 Minneapolis teachers strike. See the journey @Jeff_Wagner4 took to solve a Minnesota music mystery. | https://t.co/dz7grOfpQW pic.twitter.com/mnX082M0bc
— WCCO – CBS Minnesota (@WCCO) April 4, 2022
