Paul Shaffer, to receive Lifetime Achievement Award in NJ, talks Letterman, disco hit

Paul Shaffer has been omnipresent in the general pop culture landscape for half a century. A household name thanks to his decades as David Letterman's on-air right-hand-man, Shaffer has won a Grammy and been nominated for three Emmys.

Next month, the Wharton Institute for the Performing Arts in New Jersey will honor him with its Lifetime Achievement Award.

“It’s just fantastic. (It) sort of legitimizes me,” Shaffer said. “You know, I didn’t go to a music school. I studied sociology in college. Piano lessons and the like (are) really my only training, so to be recognized by a real institution like this is really something for me.”

Located in Berkeley Heights, New Providence and Paterson, the Wharton Institute is an independent, nonprofit community performing arts education center that serves more than 1,500 students through programs including the New Jersey Youth Symphony, the Performing Arts School, and the Paterson Music Project.

Shaffer, 72, will receive the Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award at its "Together We Celebrate" annual gala at 6 p.m. Thursday, March 10, at the Westmount Country Club in Woodland Park.

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The Canadian born Shaffer, who now lives in the New York area, has certainly had a career worth celebrating.

He was the musical director, band leader and sidekick for NBC's "Late Night with David Letterman" from 1982 to 1993, and CBS' "Late Show with David Letterman" from 1993 to 2015, following his time playing in the house band and serving as a featured player on "Saturday Night Live" from 1975 to 1980. He served as musical director and producer for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony for 25 years, starting in 1986.

“I became fascinated with how one could play the stuff by ear," Shaffer, said, "... starting, of course, with rock ’n’ roll, my favorite, which was really just developing when I was starting to play the piano by ear (in elementary school)."

Shaffer had a sense of "not wanting there to be a music that I couldn’t understand," even if it took a while for him to come around on some styles.

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"My parents exposed me to all their favorite pop music: the standards, Sinatra, Tony Bennett, etc.," Shaffer said. " ... I couldn’t hear those harmonies for a long time until ... I started playing with an avant-garde jazz musician on the side while going to college."

Other styles followed. Shaffer has played on records by Willie Nelson, B.B. King, Cyndi Lauper, Cher and Yoko Ono. His Grammy win came in 2002 in the Best Country Instrumental Performance category for a collaboration on "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" with Earl Scruggs.