7 on Late Night and The Tonight Show Band on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien; Cleto and the Cletones on Jimmy Kimmel Live!; Kevin Eubanks, leader of The Tonight Show Band, and The Roots, an eclectic hip-hop band turned host-band of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (and later The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon), and Jon Batiste and Stay Human, the house band for the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Usually the band leader is a major part of the show, and the band leader and host often exchange playful banter during the monologue and comedy segments; the band leader has thus taken over the part of being the host's sidekick, which in the past was played by an announcer or designated co-host (such as Ed McMahon and Andy Richter). Of the current late night talk show band leaders who play this role, Paul Shaffer is well known for being a straight man to David Letterman. On The Merv Griffin Show, Mort Lindsey was the official bandleader, but trumpeter (and established comic and voice actor) Jack Sheldon shared most of the comic material and banter with host Merv Griffin. However, on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, Max Weinberg rarely spoke during the show, and his interactions with O'Brien were often short and awkward – a running gag on the show (Richter, now the announcer, was O'Brien's primary sidekick on The Tonight Show and carried on in that role on Conan, whereas new band leader Jimmy Vivino has barely any interaction with O'Brien), and Kevin Eubanks was often the butt of Leno's jokes, particularly regarding drug-related stories. Most notably The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson did not have a house band, and Ferguson often used that fact as a running gag in his show; Ferguson used a robot named Geoff Peterson as his sidekick (The Late Late Show had never had a house band with hosts Tom Snyder, Craig Kilborn, and Craig Ferguson, but with James Corden's assumption of hosting duties, the program features a house band led by Reggie Watts). Late-night talk shows are the last television format to still use house bands. They were common during the Golden Age of Radio on most variety shows and sitcoms but largely faded away in most formats other than variety and late-night in the 1950s; variety shows as a standalone format themselves fell out of favor in the 1970s.