Anyway, so I've been tracking down old videos of Prince's early hits. No use going to You Tube for that, but other sites have 'em. I'm talking all the hits from the first four albums, mind you: For You didn't have any videos, as far as I know, and only had one single, "Soft And Wet"; The self-titled second album had at least two videos for its accompanying singles; Dirty Mind and Controversy had videos as well, although the only real single was the title cut of the latter.
Watching these videos has made me realize something: Up until 1999 came out and "Little Red Corvette" was released as a single, Prince couldn't dance!
I'm not gonna post links to the videos, you can find them yourself if you really want. But look up the videos for "I Wanna Be Your Lover", "Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?", "Dirty Mind", "Controversy" and especially "Sexuality". The Purple One is doing plenty of cock-rock moves, guitar preening, and microphone handling... he certainly had charisma as a rock frontman... but compared to the smooth moves he is capable of cutting from "Little Red Corvette" onward, dude is a spazz!
It's really, really funny to see him do the Eddie Murphy white person dance from Raw, which he does in several of the aforementioned clips. But before you think I'm taking cheap potshots at one of my favorite performing artists of all time (and as a fan I feel that I am qualified to do so, unlike the millions of Prince haters out there who have even less of a sense of humor about the man as they accuse him of having) I want to make it clear that all of this has led me to wonder one question: Who was Prince's choreographer on "Little Red Corvette"? Because in that video, Prince does a little dance during the first instrumental break, busting moves that almost resemble breakdancing of the era... and he pulls it off well. It's the first time Prince ever showcases his dancing in a video (it also says a lot that "Corvette" is shot on film, not cheap video) and after that Prince's dance moves-- on stage, in videos, in the movie Purple Rain, in general --get better and better.
Nowadays dancing is de rigeur at a Prince show. He spends the whole show dancing, doing incredible moves and showing amazing dexterity for a man in his Fifties. True, the hip surgeries have limited his jaw-dropping ability to do the splits in high heels, but other than that he is in fine form. At the peak of his powers, though, only a few performers were able to match him in this department: Michael Jackson and Hammer come to mind. So I guess what I a really getting at is this: Prince's best-ever career move was hiring a choreographer to help him get that brief "Corvette" routine down to a science. It radically changed the scope of his appeal to the masses. I doubt Purple Rain would have been as big if Prince had just stuck to the guitar-hero posturing and microphone shenanigans.
So kudos to whomever was the one who gave Prince his groove. I'm sure in dancing circles this name is well-known (my guess is someone like Michael "Boogaloo Shrimp" Chambers, the same guy who taught Michael how to moonwalk) but they don't get any credit for turning Prince into the phenomenal performer he is today. Without the dancing, Prince would still be a genius... but there's plenty of geniuses out there who will never get noticed because they can't cut a rug.
Prince was smart enough to make the leap into the star arena, and driven enough to improve upon it in order to secure the fame he now enjoys. That makes it all worthwhile, and the best part is that we still have the videos that show the progress in all their hilarious glory. Maybe that's why Prince sues so many people: somewhere out there, someone has a tape of that first choreography session, and it's probably more than a little embarrassing.
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