Jean Shepherd - Legacy

Legacy

Shepherd's life and multimedia career are examined in the 2005 book Excelsior, You Fathead! The Art and Enigma of Jean Shepherd by Eugene B. Bergmann (ISBN 0-55783-600-0).

Shepherd's oral narrative style was a precursor to that used by Spalding Gray and Garrison Keillor. Marshall McLuhan in Understanding Media wrote that Shepherd "regards radio as a new medium for a new kind of novel that he writes nightly." In the "Seinfeld Season 6" DVD set, commenting on the episode titled "The Gymnast" Jerry Seinfeld says "He really formed my entire comedic sensibility—I learned how to do comedy from Jean Shepherd." Furthermore, the first name of Seinfeld's third child is "Shepherd." On January 23, 2012 the Paley Center for Media (formerly The Museum of Television and Radio) presented a tribute to Jean Shepherd. Jerry Seinfeld was interviewed for the hour and discussed how Shepherd and he had similar ways of humorously discussing minor incidents in life. He confirmed the importance of Shepherd on his career.

Shepherd was an influence on Bill Griffith's Zippy comic strip as Griffith noted in his strip for January 9, 2000. Griffith explained, "The inspiration—just plucking random memories from my childhood, as I'm wont to do in my Sunday strip (also a way to expand beyond Zippy)--and Shep was a big part of them".

In an interview with New York magazine, Steely Dan's Donald Fagen says that the figure from his solo album "Nightfly" was based on Jean Shepherd.

Though he primarily spent his radio career playing music, New York Top 40 DJ legend Dan Ingram has acknowledged Shepherd's style as an influence.

An article he wrote for the March–April 1957 issue of MAD Magazine, "The Night People vs Creeping Meatballism", described the differences between what he considered to be "day people" (conformists) and "night people" (non-conformists). In the opening credits of John Cassavetes' 1959 film Shadows the credits read "Presented by Jean Shepherd's Night People".

In 2005, Shepherd was posthumously inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame. In Hammond, IN the Community Center is named after him.