{"id":1372,"date":"2014-07-29T09:30:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-29T14:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/historyapolis.com\/?p=1372"},"modified":"2024-01-10T13:43:35","modified_gmt":"2024-01-10T19:43:35","slug":"purple-rain-love-letter-minneapolis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mvt.rpw.mybluehost.me\/.website_3d6664ec\/2014\/07\/29\/purple-rain-love-letter-minneapolis\/","title":{"rendered":"Purple Rain: “A love letter to Minneapolis”"},"content":{"rendered":"
Published July 29, 2014 by Kirsten Delegard<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The premiere of the film, “Purple Rain,” thirty years ago was a major cultural milestone for Minneapolis. Listen here<\/a> to this wonderful conversation between Minneapolis native Michele Norris and National Public Radio television correspondent Eric Deggans about the film–and its legacy for music, the city and the world. Norris–who is related to musician Mark Brown–calls the film “a love letter to Minneapolis.”<\/p>\n This image–by local photographer Charles Chamblis, who chronicled the African-American community in Minneapolis during the years dominated by the “Minneapolis Sound”–may show Prince delivering a far more intimate “love letter” to the part of the city that nurtured him when he was most vulnerable. The photograph–from the collections of the Minnesota Historical Society–shows Prince playing in 1985 at a street festival sponsored by Phyllis Wheatley House, the North Side settlement house that has nurtured generations of young people and served as a safe haven in the city for African-American visitors. Taken one year after the release of the film that made him internationally famous, this photograph illuminates the North Side roots<\/a> of the man most associated in the public imagination with First Avenue downtown.<\/p>\n