John Lewis Nelson

Musician. Father of Prince. Moved to Minnesota from Louisiana in the 1948 to escape the racism of the south. He started the Prince Rogers Trio and this is what inspired his son to become a musician. He met Prince's mother while she was the lead singer for his group. They had one other child together, and he had four other children from his first wife, plus another son from a different relationship. He is given songwriting credit on a few of his son's songs, most notably Scandalous from the Batman soundtrack.

• Reference: Biographical Summaries of Notable People - SmartCopy: Apr 21 2016, 19:12:19 UTC
• John Nelson Obituary Saturday, 1 September 2001
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_L._Nelson
• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Apr 21 2016, 21:24:20 UTC

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• Reference: Ancestry Genealogy - SmartCopy: Mar 12 2019, 6:04:13 UTC

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Nelson was born in Webster Parish, Louisiana, the son of Carrie (Jenkins) and Clarence Nelson. The Nelsons had four other children. He traveled to Minneapolis to become a musician in 1948. Playing the piano, he used "Prince Rogers" as a stage name and started a band called "The Prince Rogers Trio" with local musicians.

In 1956, he met Mattie Della Shaw (November 11, 1933 – February 15, 2002) at a show on the north side of Minneapolis. Shaw was a jazz musician who became the musical group’s singer. She had one son, Alfred Frank Alonzo Jackson (July 6, 1953 – August 29, 2019).[2] Nelson married Shaw on August 31, 1957,[3] and the couple had two more children, musician Prince[4] (1958–2016) (who was named after his father’s stage name) and daughter singer Tyka Nelson (born 1960). The couple formally separated in 1965 and were divorced on September 24, 1968.[3]

John Nelson's grandfather, Rev. Edward "Ed." Nelson was born to a White slaveowner, John Nelson and his Cherokee concubine.[citation needed] Rev. Ed became a travelling preacher for the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church and married Emma, a Black woman.