Music professionals, Sugar Sand Festival honor Prince

CLEARWATER (FOX 13) - The city of Clearwater and the organizers of the Pier 60 Sugar Sand Festival honored the musical genius of Prince by sculpting a memorial Thursday. 

Organizers said, since the festival's theme this year was music, it was only fitting to include the icon's image on the day of his passing. 

Meanwhile, Prince's death was mourned in the same place he once dominated: the airwaves. Q105 DJs were playing four Prince songs an hour and immediately built a half-hour tribute mix Thursday.

"You talk about music that would drive everybody to the dance floor, you would call them the power records," DJ Dave "Flash" Morgan said. 

And USF music professor Clint Randles pointed out, Prince was as adept at writing movie soundtracks, like for Pretty Woman.

"As he was at predicting the danger to the industry, Internet file sharing programs would become. Prince aggressively sued music bootleggers," Randles explained. "He was all about the art, and all about preserving what he thought was great about the art. To him, the art was great sound, and frankly, the art is getting paid."

Prince sold a hundred million records. He did it with talent, style, his name, or symbol. Professor Randles remembers a Smithsonian visit where he saw Prince's guitar in the same display as Abraham Lincoln's top hat.

Prince died at his Minnesota home Thursday. He was 57.