When the show changed to CBS and The Late Show, I was out of high school, and starting my radio career in college. I was also starting to do an impression of David Letterman, among other celebrities and polilticians. In 1994, I got what was the coolest gig a 21-year-old kid could have: Doing voice impressions on a live morning radio show. Thanks to the generosity of a man named Gene Taylor, executive producer of the Dick Purtan Show on Q95 in Detroit, Dick heard about me and hired me after a brief audition in his office. I gave him a list of voices I did, and one by one, with his eyes closed, he ran down the list while I performed each impression.
Now, not all of my celebrity impressions were perfect, especially David Letterman, but it was a starting point. And having some people you respected in the business you love, believe in you to the point that they'd like you to perform your voice impressions on the air with them, well that was everything to me in my very early professional life.
Here's one of those early performances of my David Letterman impression with Dick Purtan: