Prince’s Former Bodyguard and Dancer Wally Safford Dies At 63

Wally Safford, a Detroit native who served as a bodyguard of Prince, has passed away at age the of 63. The cause of his death is yet to be known.

Safford grew up in the Nation of Islam and received an ample amount of bodyguard training growing up. Aside from Prince, Safford used his training to make a living and provided security for bands such as the Commodores, Parliament-Funkadelic, Teddy Pendergrass and Earth, Wind & Fire.

When he was still working for Prince, he’d typically have a hotel room adjacent to the singer’s so he could access him at any moment. Usually, the singer wakes up in the middle of the night to ask him a stationery paper so he could write lyrics. Aside from being the singer’s body guard, Safford would also perform as a dancer in Prince’s band.

He was included in Prince’s “Girls and Boys” video and the Sign O’ the Times concert film, featuring the “Detroit Crawl” dance, which was actually named after him. Safford also tried writing his own song, but it remains unreleased until today.

The song “Wally,” is something he wrote just after breaking up with Susannah Melvoin, twin sister of the Revolution’s Wendy Melvoin. In 2019, Safford released a memoir going through his years with Prince and it was dubbed as, “Wally, Where’d You Get Those Glasses? My Life Through the Lens of Parliament, Pendergrass and Prince.”

Safford previously told the public that he wanted to talk about his journey through life and for him, “Prince just happened to be at the end of it.”