It is so cool to see ?uest Love joining the ranks of the late show drummers. I think back to when I was a teenager in the 70's playing drums and trying to clone guys like Buddy Rich and Louie Bellson. I had a serious love for big band drumming and the Tonight Show band was always a staple. Watching Ed Shaughnessy drive that band was always a treat. I would scan the TV Guide every Sunday to see if Carson had any guest musicians being featured. No cable guide to que up back then. If a jazz artist like Dizzy Gillespie was going to appear I would make sure to catch it. Every once in a while they would feature the band and it was always cool. It was frustrating to just hear a few seconds of the tunes they were playing in and out of commercial breaks. It wasn't until I was a working player that I realized that he had the greatest gig in the world. Playing with great players every night, backing up other famous musicians, playing the gig around 6pm and home at a decent hour and living a normal life.
When I was 14 I saved every bit of my lawn cutting $$ and attended the Ludwig Drum Symposium at East Carolina University. It was a week of immersing oneself in the drums. I attended classes taught by rock great Carmine Appice to drum corps legend Dennis Delucia. Max Roach was slated to teach but bailed out due to a gig in Europe. I remember meeting William F. Ludwig Jr. while I was there and watching him go off about Roach "blowing off the kids" for a gig. He spent the rest of the afternoon calling Max a "cockroach". Ed Shaughnessy was kind enough to fill in for the classes. He was a very gracious man and very matter of fact about how he developed his playing. Not much mystery, just a lot of listening and practicing. He was very much influenced by Gene Krupa and explained how he developed his chops by taking medium swing jazz standards and playing them in double time.
Unlike other late show drummers, Shaughnessy was defined by his gig. Unlike greats like Steve Jordan, Anton Figg, or Max Weinberg who had their own identity outside the show, Shaughnessy was the "Tonight Show Drummer". Kind of like an actor who gets pigeon holed into a certain genre by a part he played in one movie. You never really saw him on recording dates like other players that made their mark before taking a late night chair. Though I am sure he had other work, I don't recall seeing him in the credits of any album I owned.
All of that aside, Ed Shaughnessy is a great player and I always got the vibe that he knew how special it was that he had that gig. I bet he never took it for granted for a second.
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