Life
Nelson was born in Louisiana. He traveled to Minneapolis to become a musician in 1948. Playing the piano, he used Prince Rogers as a stage name and started The Prince Rogers Trio with local musicians.
Nelson maintained on-off relationship with Vivian Nelson. With her, he had four children: Sharon L. (born 1942), Lorna L. (1943–2006), Norrine (born 1947), and John R. (born 1948). Nelson had another son, Duane, with Vivian in 1958.
In 1956, he met Mattie Shaw (1933–2002), at a show on the north side of Minneapolis. Shaw was an aspiring jazz musician who became the musical group's singer. Nelson married Shaw and had two more children, musician Prince on June 7, 1958 (who was named after his father's stage name) and daughter Tika Evene (usually known as Tyka) in 1960. When Nelson's career failed in late 1960, the couple became estranged and formally separated in 1966.
Nelson died on August 25, 2001, aged 85, in his home in Chanhassen, Minnesota.
Read more about this topic: John L. Nelson
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.”
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)
“O gentlemen, the time of life is short!
To spend that shortness basely were too long.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)