In the early 1980s, just when I was getting into music on both sides of the Pacific, music videos and the two ensemble comedy shows: "Saturday Night Live" and "SCTV", I heard about yet another late-night show that was becoming a hit with the college crowd, "Late Night with David Letterman" on NBC. It was the venerable "Tonight Show" at 11:30 on weeknights with all of the Hollywood crowd bantering most comfortably with veteran Johnny Carson. But then at 12:30 or so came David Letterman, a former Midwest TV weatherman who became the host of a subversively cool and funny program with Stupid Pet Tricks, Top 10 Lists, various camera stunts, and flinging various things off the roof, and that was before the guests, some of whom were truly bizarre and some of whom David openly fought with, showed up next to the desk.
As was the case with Johnny and "Tonight", David's show also had its in-house musical collective known as Paul Shaffer and The World's Most Dangerous Band which included at one point saxophonist David Sanborn, guitarist Hiram Bullock and bassist Will Lee. Lee ended up becoming the one member who stayed with Shaffer the longest right up until the end of Letterman's time as a late-night show host in 2015.
It's Will Lee that I want to focus on here since even before his time on "Letterman", he had already made it big in Japan via The New York "24th Street Band" (which also included his future "Late Night" bandmate Bullock) which had its time as a fusion group between 1978 and 1981. And then in 1981 (although J-Wiki says 1980), Lee and some of the biggest session musicians got together to form New Yorkers with him as the vocalist as well as the bassist to create a commercial song for Pioneer.
According to the YouTube video explanation by ADP Music, it was "...Steve Gadd on drums, Michael Brecker on tenor sax, Randy Brecker and Jon Faddis on trumpet, Barry Rodgers on trombone, Warren Barnhardt on keyboards, Clifford Morris and George Wadenius on guitars, Crusher Bennet on percussion." as the New Yorkers. Given the more ominous Japanese title of "Ai no Suspense" (Love Suspense), I prefer the English title of "I Believe In Love" since the song itself has that blissful feeling in its arrangement as if Lee had gotten a kiss from the very person that he was crushing on. All of the musicians and Lee come together to create this feeling of a joyful stroll through a city whether it be The Big Apple or Tokyo. I always appreciate city horns.
The late Tadao Inoue（井上忠夫）, formerly of the Group Sounds band Jackey Yoshikawa & His Blue Comets and before he took on the stage name of Daisuke Inoue（井上大輔）, was the one who composed this feel-good soulful song with Masao Yagi（八木正生）as the lyricist and pianist Hiromasa Suzuki（鈴木宏昌）as the arranger. The B-side is apparently an instrumental version of "Ai no Suspense", so it was basically that one shot by the New Yorkers but I'd say that it was a shot that turned into a home run.
Anyways, please enjoy this video of seeing David throwing stuff off of a 5-story building. Happy weekend!
That's really cool. I wasn't aware of Will Lee's career before Letterman, although I thought he put out more solo stuff later. Shaffer had a knack for pulling together top-notch session musicians, whether for SNL, the Blues Brothers or Letterman. I loved it when he'd drop stuff off buildings. I'm pretty sure I saw that skit the night it first aired.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that's what I love about doing the blog...I get to find out some amazing revelations. Never would I have thought that a member of Paul Shaffer's band was providing City Pop the year before.
DeleteI do remember Letterman laughing up his internal organs while Bud Melman was interviewing folks in the street and handing out hot towels. Then, there was the Andy Kaufman incident.
The Lawler/Kaufman incident was a work (meaning it was staged) but was handled in a believable way. After Vince McMahon announced on TV at the beginning of the Attitude era that it was an entertainment product, that was the end of kayfabe. Granted, people knew wrestling was a work anyhow but the risks their performers took were often very real, hence why many wrestlers wound up permanently crippled and wheelchair-bound.
ReplyDeleteWrestling is in many ways more dangerous than any of the *real* MMA and boxing matches or other professional sports. Most of that stuff is fixed as well. For instance, did you know that all the refs in football have stipulations in their contracts that they're not allowed to talk to any press? It would be very easy for one of them to slip up and let the cat out of the bag.
Sorry for going on a tangent, J.
Hi, Michael. Yeah, I remember reading some years later that the whole thing was just some nuttiness that Kaufman had set up beforehand.
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