David Letterman only has a handful of episodes left and then he'll be gone from late-night television forever. His last Late Show is May 20, and even Jimmy Kimmel won't be airing a new episode that night in honor of his childhood hero. You've likely read tributes and appreciations about Dave and maybe you even watched the special on CBS last week that looked back at his 33 years on late night. But as all of these remembrances have been piling up, something keeps gnawing at my brain.

What about Dave's morning show?

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Before he started hosting NBC's Late Night on February 1, 1982, Letterman had a 90-minute live morning show on the network titled The David Letterman Show. It ran from June 23, 1980, until October 24 of that same year. Yes, it was incredibly short-lived and not really watched by anyone except people of a certain age or people who happened to know exactly who the hell this guy was because of his guest-hosting stints on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. It was also brilliant.

As it turns out, Dave in the morning was a lot like what Dave at night would later be: irreverent and slightly askew, with goofy comedy segments and guests doing odd things, especially for a time slot that up until then was filled with a trio of game shows. Look at the opening of the show. The black-and-white photographs, the music, the low-key announcer. Doesn't it have the feel of a weird after-midnight show?

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

A lot of the same people who went on to work on Late Night and The Late Show started with Dave here: Gerry Mulligan, Merrill Markoe, Hal Gurnee, Biff Henderson, announcer Bill Wendell, and Barbara Gaines. Wil Shriner and Edd Hall worked on the show too (Hall would later go on to be the announcer on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno) as did Rich Hall and Edie McClurg. "Small Town News" started here too (though Paul Shaffer hadn't joined Dave yet). And please note that veteran NBC anchor Edwin Newman provided live news updates while the show was going on.

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

A lot of the people who would later guest on Letterman's nighttime shows appeared on the morning version too. Here's Steve Martin coming out asleep in a bed, and also Andy Kaufman acting all, well, Andy Kaufman-ish.

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Maybe one of the reasons why The David Letterman Show isn't being mentioned a lot in the tributes (besides the fact that Dave is being honored for his work in late night and not the many things he did before launching Late Night in 1982) is because the morning show has rarely been seen since airing. It's not available on DVD, it's not currently airing anywhere, and there are surprisingly few clips to be found even on places like YouTube. But this was an important show, even if it did last for only four months.

I had just turned 15 a couple of weeks before the show launched, and I remember being really excited about this new talk show hosted by the sarcastic guy who I had seen on The Tonight Show. I'm of the generation that is sort of in the middle when it comes to talk-show hosts. I consider Johnny the best of all time and watched his show even when I was 8, 10, 12 years old. But I was also of the age where I wanted something hipper. Someone who obviously honored the traditions of all the talk-show hosts that had come before him (Johnny, Steve Allen, Jack Paar) but at the same time wanted to slightly dismantle that history. Letterman was that guy, and he's probably the biggest influence in American comedy of the past 40 years. Just ask Conan and everyone on Saturday Night Live and Jon Stewart and all of the various Jimmys on late night right now.

I'm wondering if Dave simply doesn't think much of his morning show and doesn't want it to be seen, preferring to instead mark 1982 as his talk-show hosting debut. Maybe he sees this show as a "failure" and only sort of a test run for what would later become Late Night. But these four months of The David Letterman Show—a show that was an oasis for teenagers like me and people in their 20s, something truly for us among the usual network fodder of more traditional talk shows and soap operas and game shows—need to be seen again.

NBC: Put up an official website and stream them. Make a deal with Netflix or Hulu and have the episodes available for everyone to see. Release the episodes on DVD and I promise promise promise to buy several copies and give them to everyone I know as holiday presents.

Congrats on all your success, Dave. You've done a lot in your television career and you have a massive amount to be proud of. Including a really glorious morning show in the summer of 1980 that true fans of a certain age will always remember with fondness.

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io