Prince’s music was rooted in Minneapolis, but can his family roots be traced to Louisiana?
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If John Lewis Nelson had not been born in the Webster Parish town of Cotton Valley, there would have been no purple rain in Minnesota.
Which only partially answers Roxanne Hare’s Curious Louisiana question about the possibility of a Louisiana connection to the late Prince.
Yes, Prince, as in legendary pop and rock musician, songwriter and actor who is affiliated with the color purple through his 1984 hit, “Purple Rain.”
Landmark buildings throughout the United States, including the then Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, lit their exteriors in purple upon the announcement of his death on April 21, 2016.
The Superdome’s purple lights commemorated the musician and his career, but they also could have been a nod to Prince’s Louisiana lineage.
Hare, a big fan of the singer, knew that Prince was born Prince Rogers Nelson in Minneapolis. He continued making his home in Minnesota after he skyrocketed to fame through his music.
“But,” the Baton Rouge resident writes, “I recently heard that his family was from Louisiana. Is this true?”
“Yes,” said Cotton Valley Police Clerk Amy Stewart, though she didn’t know about the connection until a scavenger hunter visited the Town Hall.
“Actually, one of my coworkers brought it to my attention about a year ago,” Stewart said. “She said someone came in saying they were on a treasure hunt, and they had a clue in the form of, ‘Where was the king born?'”
The clue was a play on words. If Prince was a prince, his dad, John Lewis Nelson, naturally was the king, who was born and grew up in Cotton Valley.
The town is located 20 miles south of the Arkansas state line and 43 miles northeast of Shreveport. The community was established in the mid-19th century but wasn’t incorporated until 1944.
The town’s population stands at 787, according to the 2020 Census, but it was more than 1,300 when John Lewis Nelson was born there on June 29, 1916.
But Prince’s Louisiana connections don’t stop there.
According to the genealogical website geni.com, Nelson’s parents — Prince’s maternal grandparents — also were born in Louisiana.
“What we learned after looking into it is that Prince’s mother’s parents were from Louisiana, too,” Stewart said.
Though his mother, jazz singer Mattie Della Shaw was born in Minneapolis, her mother, Lucille Bernard Shaw, was born in Lincoln Parish in 1899.
Prince’s dad moved from Louisiana to Minneapolis in the mid 1940s, where he formed his jazz group, the Prince Rogers Trio. He met Mattie in 1956, they married in 1957 and Prince Rogers Nelson was born in 1958.
Here’s an extra tidbit: Prince was named for his dad’s stage name.
The couple divorced when Prince was 10. John Lewis Nelson died on Aug. 25, 2001, in Chanhassen, Minnesota. Mattie Della Shaw died on Feb. 15, 2002, in Edina, Minnesota.
But there’s more. Prince’s great-aunt, Black nationalist Mittie Maude Lena Nelson Gordon, who established the Peace Movement of Ethiopia, was born in Webster Parish on Aug. 2, 1889.
Unlike his dad, Prince didn’t limit his music to one genre. He incorporated funk, R&B, rock, new wave, soul, synth-pop, pop, jazz, blues and hip-hop into his self-produced albums, pioneering what has become known as the Minneapolis sound.
He sold more than 150 million records worldwide. His long string of awards included seven Grammys, a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for best original song for the title song of his 1984 film “Purple Rain.”
Prince’s concert tours eventually would bring him to his dad’s native Louisiana for more than 20 performances, beginning in 1979 with the small nightclub, Ole Man River’s, in Avondale and ending as the 2014 headliner for the 20th anniversary of the Essence Festival in what is now the Caesars Superdome. In between were appearances in Baton Rouge, Lake Charles, Monroe and, finally, the city physically closest to his father’s hometown, Shreveport.
Maybe someone who was at one of his Louisiana shows remembers if he made reference to his family’s connection to Cotton Valley.
