‘Cherish Your Friends, We’re Not Here Forever’

Jimmy Kimmel delivered an emotional monologue Tuesday, honoring his late childhood friend and “Jimmy Kimmel Live” bandleader Cleto Escobedo III, who died that day at the age of 59.

“We’ve been on the air for almost 23 years, and I’ve had to do some hard monologues along the way,” Kimmel said through tears at the top of the show. “But this one’s 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, if you don’t mind.” (Watch the monologue in full above.)

The host then told stories from his youth, including how the two men met as children and why they stayed such close friends throughout the years.

“There was a boy who lived on my block. He lived across the street and two houses over. He was a little over a year older than me. His name was Cleto, but we all called him Junior,” Kimmel said. “Eventually, we met and became friends. And not just regular friends. We became 24/7, ‘Mom, please let me sleep over, please,’ kind of friends. One summer, I slept over at the Escobedo house 33 nights in a row. My mother used to make me get down on my knees and beg to sleep at his house in front of him. And I would gladly do it, because we were never bored. We were always up to something.”

Kimmel also told the story of how he pitched and ultimately hired Escobedo and his father, Cleto Escobedo Sr., to be the bandleader and band member (respectively) of his late-night house band. He admitted that his pitch of, “‘My best friend from growing up plays the saxophone, he could lead the band,'” didn’t sound very convincing.

He continued: “Everyone here at the show, we are devastated by this. It’s just not fair. He was the nicest, most humble, kind and always funny person.”

With Escobedo’s father sitting with the band and his mother in the audience, Kimmel continued to explain the close connection he had with his late friend, and why the loss was so painful to everyone on the show.

“We had so many adventures. We laughed so hard. We had our own language that almost no one else understood,” he said. “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.”

Escobedo’s cause of death was not immediately announced. In light of the news, “Jimmy Kimmel Live” will be taking the rest of the week off.

Kimmel cancelled Thursday’s episode when the musician’s condition took a turn for the worst. Then on Tuesday, the host shared news of Escobedo’s death on Instagram writing, “To say that we are heartbroken is an understatement. Cleto and I have been inseparable since I was nine years old. The fact that we got to work together every day is a dream neither of us could ever have imagined would come true. Cherish your friends and please keep Cleto’s wife, children and parents in your prayers.”