The act originated out of The Mothership Connection, a 1970s funk tribute band in which Tenner played in the mid-1990s. Tenner was inspired to begin incorporating Prince's music into the band's act after he dressed as the musician for Halloween in 1996 and received positive feedback on the resemblance. It was named after Prince's 1984 hit song, "
Purple Rain", and the
film of the same name. The group performed regularly at Tom and Jerry's, a bar near the
University of Nevada, Las Vegas campus. In 2001, the band was hired to perform nightly in the lounge at the
Boardwalk Hotel and Casino on the
Las Vegas Strip. They soon added impersonators of Prince associates
Morris Day and
Jerome Benton to the lineup. For the next few years, the band performed weekly gigs at various casinos, including
Santa Fe Station,
Mandalay Bay, and the
Monte Carlo. They made an appearance on the
Late Show with David Letterman in 2008. The show moved to
The D casino in
Downtown Las Vegas in 2012. When the D's showroom closed for renovations eight months later, the show moved back to Hooters and then had a short run at the
Planet Hollywood casino, before returning to the D in June 2014. Tenner moved his show to the Shimmer Cabaret at the
Westgate Las Vegas in October 2014. After Prince's death in April 2016, the show gained extra attention, and moved into the hotel's main theater, where a more elaborate stage production was developed. A tribute to
Vanity 6, a female vocal group assembled by Prince, was added to the show. Tenner found that the larger venue was too expensive to make the show profitable, however, so he left in October 2017. ==References==