This is the penultimate set of our Prince-themed 6 Degrees series, where we connect albums from The List and point out some connections with The Purple One. Carrying on from where we left off last time…
6 Degrees of Separation: Tom Waits to Madhouse
Tom Waits – Nighthawks At The Diner (list number 525)
>> While Madhouse (which ended Part 6) may not be a familiar connection to Prince for some, the name “New Power Generation” (or NPG, or NPG Orchestra), likely rings a bell for those who are even just casual Prince fans. The group played both as Prince’s backing band and as a standalone recording group, with an ever-changing list of members. One of the members of the NPG Orchestra at some point was Jim Hughart, who was the bass player on this Tom Waits album. Tom Waits would later go on to collaborate with…
Los Lobos Del Este De Los Angeles – Just Another Band From East L.A. (511)
…Los Lobos (on their 2004 album The Ride), who appear on the final track of…
Paul Simon – Graceland (78)
…this album by Paul Simon. Previously, as part of Simon & Garfunkel, Simon played with the drummer Bobby Gregg, who was also the drummer on…
Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited (843)
…this album by Bob Dylan. Dylan has noted that a big influence on him was…
The Staple Singers – Uncloudy Day (204)
…The Staple Singers (who have also covered Dylan). Mavis Staples of the Staple Singers is tightly connected to Prince – he essentially brought her out of (semi-)retirement in the 80s and wrote two albums for her (the 1989 Time Waits For No One and 1993 The Voice), both of which were put out on his Paisley Park label, as was…
Madhouse – 16 (New Directions In Garage Music) (470)
all albums by Madhouse. <<
Prince 6
In addition to those listed above, here’s a few more fun connections between this group of artists and The Purple One. Let me know in the comments if you know of any others!
- Tom Waits and Paul Simon both dug Prince, because of course they did.
- Prince has covered Bob Dylan at least a couple times, including “All Along the Watchtower” at that spectacular 2008 Super Bowl performance (Youtube).
- In Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour radio show, Dylan played Prince a few times: in the “Cars” episode, he included Prince’s song “Little Red Corvette” (go to 48:40 in this video; the song had to be removed due to copyright, but Dylan’s banter before and after the song appeared is a lot of fun); “Kiss” in the “Kiss” episode; and “When Doves Cry” in the “More Birds” episode.
- Mavis Staples also appeared with Prince in the Graffiti Bridge film (her song on the soundtrack, “Melody Cool”, also appeared on The Voice album).
- (Not a direct Prince connection, but Mavis Staples is also on Los Lobos’ album The Ride mentioned above.)
- Mavis Staples and Prince remained very close even after this period of collaboration, and she essentially treated Prince as her son. (And, since Dylan had once proposed to Mavis Staples, if she hadn’t turned him down, in another timeline Dylan might’ve been Prince’s surrogate step-dad, lol…)
Tune in tomorrow for the final part of this series, to see where we go from Madhouse! While the set is heavily laced with The Purple One, there will also be a surprising amount of the 90s Seattle scene in there (!).
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John Eckman
1001 Other Albums