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 spent the week rehearsing for the Saturday Night Live 50th anniversary concert.

“I’ll be reuniting The World’s Most Dangerous Band for four super-fun shows with Jimmy. We hope to finally get right all the mistakes we made with Dave,” Shaffer said in a statement to Billboard.

Shaffer previously served as the musical director and band leader on Late Night With David Letterman from 1982 to 1993 and Late Show With David Letterman from 1993 to 2015. His 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 entered 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 songs chart.

He’s also a Grammy winner and multi-Emmy nominee. At the 2002 Grammy ceremony, he 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.