When Prince Ruled Columbia

Charles Prince is a domineering character in the world of record collecting. If you see a pile of early records, the chances are pretty good that you’ll see at least one record with his name on the label somewhere. He is all over the place on records, but little has been done in terms of research and biography. There is a lot of misleading and vague information on Prince out there, and this article will attempt to correct the uninformed guesses that have left him an oddly mysterious character. Charles Adams Prince lived a very old California life, with status in the state that was similar to that of a railroad man’s son. Charles was born around December 1867 in San Francisco, but his family had relocated to the small remote town of Santa Cruz by 1870. Charles’ parents were in the fruit packing business, which was and still is a major California industry. By the mid-1870s, the family had moved back into the big city and there they remained. Prince grew up far on the north end of the city, closer to the Barbary Coast than to “the slot” (the cable car line on Market Street), so this left him exploring an area known for its vice and danger. It is unclear what Prince’s musical training was exactly, and when it began, but he likely started early, and he had a lot of natural talent on the piano and violin to get him going. At age 16, he was working as a lifeguard out at the pie