House band in the context of "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson"

A late-night talk show is a genre of talk show, originating in the United States. It is generally structured around humorous monologues about the day's news, guest interviews, comedy sketches and music performances. It is characterized by spontaneous conversation, and for an effect of immediacy and intimacy as if the host were speaking directly to each member of the watching audience. Late-night talk shows are also fundamentally shaped by the personality of the host.

The late-night talk show format was popularized by Johnny Carson and his sidekick Ed McMahon with The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson on NBC. Typically, the show's host conducts interviews from behind a desk, while a guest(s) is seated on a couch. Many late-night talk shows feature a house band which generally performs cover songs for the studio audience during commercial breaks and occasionally will back up a guest artist.

The Velvet Underground was an American rock band formed in New York City in 1964. The New York Times wrote that the Velvet Underground was "arguably the most influential American rock band of our time". Though their integration of rock and the avant-garde earned them little commercial success during their initial nine-year run, they are now widely regarded as one of the most influential bands in rock music, as well as underground, experimental, and alternative music. Their provocative subject matter and experimentation were instrumental in the development of punk rock, new wave and other genres.

The group performed under several names before settling on the Velvet Underground in 1965, taken from the title of a 1963 book on atypical sexual behavior. Its classic lineup consisted of singer and guitarist Lou Reed, Welsh multi-instrumentalist John Cale, guitarist Sterling Morrison, and percussionist Moe Tucker. In 1966, pop artist Andy Warhol became their official manager. They served as the house band at Warhol's studio, The Factory, and performed with his traveling multimedia show, Exploding Plastic Inevitable, from 1966 to 1967. Their debut album, The Velvet Underground & Nico, featuring the German singer and model Nico, was released in 1967 to critical indifference and poor sales, although it has since been hailed as one of the greatest albums in music history.

Stax Records is an American record company, originally based in Memphis, Tennessee. Founded in 1957 as Satellite Records, the label changed its name to Stax Records in September 1961. It also shared its operations with sister label Volt Records.

Stax was influential in the creation of Southern soul and Memphis soul music. Stax also released gospel, funk, and blues recordings. The label was founded by two siblings, business partners Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton, whose last names formed the basis of the label's name (Stewart + Axton = "Stax"). It featured several popular ethnically integrated bands (including the label's house band, Booker T. & the M.G.'s) and a racially integrated team of staff and artists unprecedented in that time of racial strife and tension in Memphis and the South. According to ethnomusicologist Rob Bowman, the label's use of "one studio, one equipment set-up, the same set of musicians and a small group of songwriters led to a readily identifiable sound. It was a sound based in black gospel, blues, country, and earlier forms of rhythm and blues (R&B). It became known as southern soul music."