There's been a lot of talk, in the lead-up to tonight's presidential debate on Long Island, about whether moderator and NBC anchor Lester Holt should fact-check Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump if/when they get a little evasive with the truth about their use of personal email at the State Department (Hillary) or tell grandiose, paranoid lies about everything (D. Trump). For what it's worth, Jonathan Chait makes a persuasive case here that such instant fact-checking would not ultimately help liberal candidates as much as their supporters think it would, but I'm not actually here to talk about Lester Holt's role as a fact-checker. I'm here to say that there has not been nearly enough discussion, in the lead-up to tonight's debate, of the passion that Lester Holt has for laying down tasty licks and grooves as an amateur jazz bassist.

That's our guy! Holt told Making Music magazine that he's self-taught and got his first instrument at a pawn shop. He appears to be comfortable playing multiple styles; here, he's backing some small-combo cats at an intimate event in Harlem:

A beep a bop a doo bop! Here he is spiffing up a spiffed-up and funked-out version of the Nightly News theme song with the legendary Roots crew on The Tonight Show:

Skeedely-dee! And here he is jumping in on some honky-tonk blues in 2014 at Memphis' Sun Studio:

He also once appeared at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville with pop-country star Luke Bryan.

Scat-syllable jokes aside, jazz is fun and music is good and it's good that Lester Holt has fun playing music, in my opinion!