Paul Shaffer working on his memoir

NEW YORK - David Letterman's longtime sidekick, Paul Shaffer, is stepping into the spotlight with a memoir about his show business career.

"These anecdotes have been accumulating in my mind for the past three-plus decades; it's been a nutty ride, and I felt it imperative to finally commit my reflections to the page ... at least Volume One," Shaffer, 57, said in a statement issued Wednesday by Flying Dolphin Press, an imprint of Random House, Inc.'s Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group.

The book, currently untitled, is scheduled to come out in 2009. Shaffer will work on it with David Ritz, who has collaborated on memoirs by Marvin Gaye and Ray Charles among others.

Shaffer was a musician and performer during the early years of "Saturday Night Live," perhaps best remembered as the piano playing foil for Bill Murray's Nick the Lounge Singer. He was musical director for John Belushi's and Dan Aykroyd's "Blues Brothers" act and is known to "Spinal Tap" fans as radio promoter Artie Fufkin.

Since 1982, Shaffer has worked alongside Letterman, heading up "The World's Most Dangerous Band." He has also played and recorded with countless musicians, including Bob Dylan, B.B. King and Warren Zevon, and co-wrote the 1980s dance classic, "It's Raining Men."