In an unprecedented show of support for the Philadelphia Music Alliance, Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon will be making a special guest appearance at the 2015 Walk of Fame Gala next week to personally induct his house band, The Roots, into the Class of 2015 with a permanent position among its hometown music legends along the famed Avenue of the Arts.
Special arrangements have been made to enable Fallon to arrive at the Gala on Monday, Oct. 26, direct from a Tonight Show taping at his New York studios earlier that evening. He is scheduled to hit the stage just in time to formally induct The Roots — one of the best known and most respected hip-hop acts in the business — and present the band with their ceremonial plaque.
With Questlove serving as the show’s musical director, The Roots has been the official house band on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon since its launch last year. The four-time Grammy-winning ensemble served in the same capacity for Fallon the previous five years on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.
The Roots’ induction extends a unique Tonight Show connection with the Philadelphia Walk of Fame that began in 1989, when Ed McMahon, Johnny Carson’s longtime sidekick, was inducted. In 2010, fellow Philadelphia native Kevin Eubanks, Jay Leno’s Tonight Show music director for 18 years, also was immortalized with a bronze plaque on the Walk of Fame.
Named one of the greatest live bands around by Rolling Stone magazine, The Roots will be honored by Fallon with fellow Class of 2015 members Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel, Billie Holiday, Cinderella, The Trammps, Andrea McArdle, and WOGL air personality Harvey Holiday at the new Fillmore Philadelphia, frequently hailed as “the most beautiful club in America.”
With 16 Grammy Awards and a Tony Award nomination among the new honorees, spanning the musical gamut from Jazz, Country, Disco, Hip Hop/Neo Soul, Rock, Broadway and radio, the long-awaited return of the evening Gala considerably amplifies the vital significance of the Philadelphia Music Alliance and Walk of Fame as its 30th anniversary approaches in 2016.