By his early teens, Allen wanted to give comedy a try himself performing stand up at the legendary Comedy Store. His jokes were good enough to get him scouted by Jimmy JJ Walker of Good Times fame. So with just 14, Allen’s mother dropped him off at Walker’s house where he sat down with to promising young comics pitching jokes at $25 a pop, their names Jay Leno and David Letterman

Geoff Bennett: By 18, Allen landed a spot on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, the youngest comic ever to take that stage.

Byron Allen: I remember standing behind the curtain joking with you know, the crew, and I had my back to the curtain. And all of a sudden they stopped laughing and kidding with me. And then they said they clear their throats like, like Turn around, turn around and was Johnny Carson.

And he had gotten up from behind his desk, and he said, Hey, kid, don’t worry, you’re going to be great. And they said we’d been pulling the curtain for him for 30 years, whatever, years and they said he has never gotten up from behind the desk and said anything to anybody.

And at that moment, I said, Wow, this guy is one of my heroes. And I said, what I do in the next five minutes will change my life, and my mother’s life, the trajectory of our lives forever. So I’m going to go out there, I’m going to have fun, and I’m just going to light it up.