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Prince · S1 E5
Pepe Willie
His cousin's husband and early mentor. Sessions with 94 East give Prince his first taste of a real recording studio
Sound 80 Studios, Minneapolis, 1976. A seventeen-year-old plugs into a console worth more than everything he owns and lays down a guitar track so clean the engineer checks twice to make sure it is not a playback.
Prince, Alphabet St. (Official Music Video, 1988). Wah-drenched funk guitar, layered production, and Prince in total command of the studio. Every second of this track traces back to what a teenager first learned at Sound 80.
“The kid could play everything. Guitar, bass, keyboards, drums. He was maybe sixteen, seventeen. I'd never seen anything like it in my life.”
— Pepe Willie, as quoted in Possessed: The Rise and Fall of Prince (2003)
The Family Connection
Pepe Willie is a musician from New York who moves to Minneapolis after meeting Prince's cousin Shauntel Manderville. They marry in 1974, and Willie becomes part of Prince's extended family. He leads a funk band called 94 East, and when he hears what his wife's teenage cousin can do with a guitar, he brings Prince into the studio immediately.
One of the premier recording studios in the Midwest. Prince first set foot inside as a session guitarist for 94 East, and the room changed the way he thought about making music.
TAP TO REVEAL: What legendary album was partly recorded in the same studio where Prince had his first session?
How did Pepe Willie discover Prince's talent?
Housequake, Prince
From Sign o' the Times (1987). Seven minutes of raw, uncut funk with Prince playing every instrument and programming every beat. This is the logical conclusion of everything that started in those 94 East sessions.
Prince has tasted the studio and he is not going back to the basement. Next: Owen Husney, the demo that shocks an industry, and the audition that changes everything.
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