Paul Shaffer was the musical director for David Letterman’s late night TV shows, has served in the same position for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies and the 1986 Atlanta Olympics, been a part of The Honeydrippers with Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant, recorded Grammy nominated albums and played with a who’s who of music for decades.
But he’s not thought of as a jazz man. But that’s just what he’ll be when he comes to the Lied Center for Performing Arts Thursday for a concert with the Nebraska Jazz Orchestra.
“It’s true I’m not really a jazz guy, but I do have a secret jazz identity and alter ego,†Shaffer said. “It started to develop when I was in college at the University of Toronto. I met a guy, guitarist Tisziji Munoz. He’s a spiritualist, a guru and master jazz improviser on the guitar. I apprenticed with this guy all that time, it was 1969. I still play with him and record with him.â€
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No stranger to jazz
And Shaffer isn’t altogether unfamiliar with jazz, having recorded with some jazz associated artists like saxophonist Lou Marini of Blues Brothers fame and working with more during his late night days.
“I did get to play with so many of them with the Letterman show, including Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie," he said. “Miles Davis came about, in the ‘80s Bill Murray had a movie ‘Scrooged’ and they said ‘what if when he’s walking down the street, he goes by a group of street musicians, but it’s Miles Davis and those kind of guys?'
“Miles came down and did it. It was Miles, David Sanborn, me and Larry Carlton. You see us for about six seconds in the movie playing “We Three Kings.†The night before, we got to go into the studio and record a six-minute version of it. Miles took the whole thing over. Think about what a million-dollar lesson for me that was.â€
Shaffer didn’t say what he and the NJO will be playing Thursday. But he promised a good show.
“We’ll have a lovely program ready to go,†Shaffer said. “I’ve sent them the music and they’re having their people do the charts. I’ll come in a day before and we’ll rehearse. It’ll be a sort of clinic situation. I may not be a jazz guy, but I know how to rehearse a band.â€
Hall of Fame fun
Among the bands Shaffer has rehearsed is the house band for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies, a chore he took on for decades.
“It’s an awful lot of fun, being associated with it,†he said. “But in the classic years, the first four or five years, there was no rehearsal at all. It was a jam session in the classic sense. The first year, they didn’t even know if they were going to have people play -- they thought ‘we’re honoring these people, but let’s have the instruments there.’ They went for the instruments. This was Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis. They just started calling out tunes.
“I just kind of by default was in charge of it. I saw John Fogerty in the audience -- he wasn’t playing his own songs then because of a lawsuit. I asked ‘would you do Proud Mary?’ He got up and did it. It was great fun then it evolved into a more polished show compatible with TV. You couldn’t have put those first years on TV. Now there’s just some home movie footage of it. I did that for them for 30 years.â€
Hanging with Dave
Of course, the group Shaffer rehearsed the most is “The World’s Most Dangerous Band,†the ensemble he led five nights a week for more than three decades -- 12 years on NBC’S “Late Night with David Letterman,†then 21 more at CBS with “Late Show with David Letterman.â€
“So far nobody’s done it that long,†Shaffer said. “But they’re all catching up with us now. Conan O’Brien has to be getting close. I’m really proud we did that and did it for so long.â€
Shaffer said he and Letterman hit it off when he was being considered for the part, but it took awhile for them to develop the chemistry that made them late night’s most popular, long-running team.
“When Dave hired me, his producers said ‘you’re the guy Dave can play off, play straight to him.’ I was ‘sure, we can do that,’†Shaffer said. “He didn’t write that in. I had to make it happen myself. Initially, we hit it off. Over time I learned what he needed both musically --- if he was dialing a phone you better have some music in there. I learned how to respond to him musically and verbally.â€
Remembering Gilda
Shaffer, however, didn’t start out with Letterman in 1982. His career began a decade earlier in his native Ontario, when he became musical director for the Toronto production of the musical “Godspell,†where he encountered Gilda Radner, who became a lifelong friend.
“We met in ‘72 in Toronto,†he said. “She was from Detroit but moved up there with a boyfriend, who she wasn’t with anymore. Everybody in the Toronto theater scene tried out for the Toronto company of ‘Godspell,’ the musical. Along with me and Gilda, there was Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas people who went on to Second City and Victor Garber, the actor. Boy did we have fun. Gilda and I became great friends. We both got hired on ‘Saturday Night Live’, she a star and me in the house band, and later I did some musical writing.â€
Shaffer, who also appeared in some “SNL†skits and seemed to be the actual musical director (credited to Howard Shore), teamed up with Radner on “Gilda Live on Broadway,â€
“Boy did she love to laugh. She would do anything for a laugh. She didn’t worry about being feminine or politically correct in any way. She wanted the laugh and she usually got it.â€
Shaffer turns up in “Love, Gilda,†the documentary about Radner released last year that includes some footage from the Toronto days as well as from ‘SNL†and the Broadway show.
The big screen
That’s far from the first time he’s been on the big screen -- he’s had bit parts in a handful of movies. Among them, the 1984 classic “This is Spinal Tap,†in which he plays the hapless record label promotion man Artie Fufkin.
“That was made in ‘81 and ‘82, I did just one weekend of work on it,†Shaffer said. “I flew out from the Letterman show to L.A. The interesting thing was there was no script. They’d give you the situation and You were just really improvising. Some of the guys had their lines thought out in advance. They’d throw out these funny lines in the middle of the scene, people would be breaking up. Rob Reiner, the director, said ‘Go ahead, you’d be laughing if they really said it.’
“It does give a different feel to it because every one’s speaking in their own voices. Christopher Guest does that now in all his movies. I think that was the first one. Over the years, so many of the actual rock musicians would tell me they had it on on the bus or watched it at home. But it wasn’t really funny to them. It’s too real.â€
Life after Letterman
In May 2015, Letterman retired, leaving Shaffer without what had been his main gig for 32 years.
“It was jarring for sure,†Shaffer said. “I was sort of at loose ends for quite some time. What was I supposed to do? Nothing’s going to be that much fun. How can you top it? I got a little depressed. Then I started playing music again. I started playing piano in the studio. Then started doing more stuff musically. I don’t have to stop and go to commercial in the middle of a song. There’s something to be said for that.â€
That renaissance led Shaffer to appear with the Kalamazoo, Michigan, symphony orchestra, settle in for a residency at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas with his band The Shaf-Shifters and, next week, come to Lincoln for another milestone.
“This is really going to be the first jazz concert I will have done with a big jazz band,†he said. “It’ll be a bucket list thing. I’m really looking forward to it, really excited to come out there.â€