Jimmy Kimmel took time last night to remember Cleto Escobedo III, his childhood friend and the longtime bandleader of Jimmy Kimmel Live. After announcing the news that Escobedo had died on Tuesday afternoon, Kimmel used his monologue to pay tribute to his pal, who was 59.
“We’ve been on the air for almost 23 years and I’ve had to do some hard monologues along the way,” Kimmel told the studio audience, breaking into tears. “But this one is the hardest because late last night, early this morning, we lost someone very special who was much too young to go. And I’d like to tell you about him.”
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The late-night host took the opportunity to share his memories of Escobedo. He recounted moving to a subdivision of Las Vegas in 1979 with his family. “That was where I grew up, on Meadow Lark Lane,” he recalled. “And there was a boy who lived on my block. He lived across the street and two houses over. He was a little bit older than me. He was a year older than me. His name was Cleto, but we all called him Junior.”
Kimmel remembered riding his bike down the street on a particular day, wearing boxing gloves and his mother’s sunglasses, when Escobedo spotted him. “Years later, he told me the first time he saw me he thought I was special,” Kimmel said. “I don’t mean special like ‘This fella is special.’ I mean like Special Olympics-type special. He saw me, a poor mentally-unfortunate kid, and eventually we met. We became friends. And not just regular friends. We became like 24/7, ‘Mom please me sleep over please,’ kind of friends.”
He added that during one summer he slept over at the Escobedo house 33 nights in a row. “We were never bored,” Kimmel noted. “We were always up to something.” Kimmel shared a selection of memories from their childhood, including the time Escobedo left a condom wrapper next to Kimmel’s parents’ bed.
“We had so many adventures,” Kimmel continued. “We would laugh so hard. We had our own language that almost no one else understood. We didn’t have to say anything. We’d sit here at rehearsal every day. We didn’t have to look at each other. I knew he was thinking about looking at me and I was thinking about looking at him. We look at each other like this and that would be it.”
He added, “We loved all the same things. Baseball, fishing, boxing, [Muhammad] Ali, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Woody Allen, Michael McDonald, Huey Lewis, Stevie Wonder, and most of all, we loved David Letterman. We never missed David Letterman. And the first time I was on the [Late Show with David Letterman] was in 1999. It was a really big deal for both of us. That afternoon before the show, I was so nervous. I was walking in New York City, just walking fast, trying to burn off the nervous energy, and I called him, just so we could be amazed together that this was happening. And it was an amazing thing.”
Kimmel also discussed Escobedo’s musical talent, explaining that he was a “phenomenal” saxophone player from a young age. “He was a child prodigy who would get standing ovations in junior high school, if you can imagine that,” Kimmel said. Escobedo was later hired by Paula Abdul to sing and play saxophone on her tour, and eventually made an album. “I went to Tower Records and bought it there,” Kimmel said.
When ABC offered Kimmel his own late-night show, Kimmel immediately knew he wanted Escobedo to be part of it.
“One day in September of 2002, I got a talk show just out of nowhere,” Kimmel recalled. “I had a meeting with an executive at ABC named Lloyd Braun and he hired me to host this show. And when you do a show like this, you need a few things. You need a desk, you need an announcer, you need a Guillermo, and you need a band. And of course, I wanted Cleto to lead my band. We grew up watching Dave and Paul, and the idea that anyone other than him would lead the band was terrifying. It had to be him. I was so scared they would say no and I would have to have another band. And not only did I want Cleto to lead the band, I wanted his dad to be in the band.”
Kimmel set up an evening where Escobedo and his father, Cleto Escobedo II, would perform at a club in Los Angeles. “Cleto and his dad did a special song. They played ‘Pick Up the Pieces’ by the Average White Band, which is two saxophones. And Lloyd saw it. He saw the father and son together. He said, ‘I love it.’ And he just got up and left. And we’ve been working together every day for almost 23 years now.”
He added, “I’ve often said that the single best thing about doing this show was getting the opportunity to allow Cleto Senior to pick up where he left off in 1966 and become a musician again with his son.”
As he described the love in the Escobedo family, Kimmel broke into tears again. He explained how much “everyone loves Cleto,” acknowledging that “everyone here at the show, we are devastated by this.”
“It’s just not fair,” Kimmel said, crying. “He was the nicest, most humble, kind, and always funny person.” He added, of their shared success, “He loved me. He loved seeing all of this happen. He loved being a part of it. He never took it for granted. … He was just a great older brother. No baggage, all love. There’s no one in my life I felt more comfortable with.”
At the end of the monologue, Kimmel confirmed that Jimmy Kimmel Live will take the rest of the week off following Escobedo’s death. “Even though I’m heartbroken to lose him, I’m going to take yet another lesson from him and acknowledge how lucky I was to have him literally at my side for so many years,” Kimmel concluded. “Cherish your friends. We’re not here forever.”
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