Paul Shaffer Returning to Late Night to Fill in for The Roots on ‘Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon’
Paul Shaffer isn’t done with late night just yet. The musician is heading to Studio 6B in Rockefeller Center with The World’s Most Dangerous Band to fill in for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon‘s house band, The Roots, as they spend the week rehearsing for the Saturday Night Live 50th-anniversary concert, Billboard can exclusively reveal.
Shaffer previously served as the musical director and bandleader on Late Night With David Letterman from 1982 to 1993 and Late Show With David Letterman from 1993 to 2015.
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“I’ll be reuniting The World’s Most Dangerous Band for four super-fun shows with Jimmy,” Shaffer said in a statement to Billboard. “We hope to finally get right all the mistakes we made with Dave.”
Shaffer’s relationship with Letterman continues to this day, as he wrote the bridging music on the talk show host’s Netflix interview series, My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.
In 2021, he was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame for co-writing the enduring disco hit “It’s Raining Men,” which he penned alongside Paul Jabara. The track, performed by the musical duo the Weather Girls, hit No. 1 on Billboard‘s Hot Dance Club Play chart and No. 46 on the Billboard Hot 100.
He’s also a Grammy winner and multi-Emmy nominee. At the 2002 Grammy ceremony, Shaffer won best country instrumental performance for playing on Earl Scruggs’ “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” At the Emmys, he was nominated twice for outstanding achievement in musical direction, both for his work on Late Night With David Letterman, in 1989 and 1992. In 2011, he was nominated again for outstanding music direction for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony that year, and was up for the same award in 2016 for A Very Murray Christmas.
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