Will Rickey Minor strike a chord with viewers? Time will tell.
But he did an admirable job last night, as American Idol's former music man filled Kevin Eubanks' long-worn shoes with aplomb as the new leader of the Tonight Show Band.
"It's going really well, man," he told Jay Leno of the first day on the job. "It's going pretty smooth, had a couple of hiccups, but you know."
No word on what those hiccups may have been, but we did notice a distinct lack of overly polite if slightly disingenuous laughing fits during the monologue (as Eubanks and Paul Shaffer could tell him, that's Sidekick 101), though fielding slightly awkward jokes about the attractiveness of your wife would probably throw anyone off his game.