<\/p>\n
Jimmy Kimmel paid tribute to his longtime friend and bandleader Cleto Escobedo III during Tuesday night\u2019s monologue.<\/p>\n
The comedian struggled to fight back tears as he opened \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live,\u201d sharing with his audience that he lost someone very dear to him.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been on the air for almost 23 years and I\u2019ve had to do some hard monologues along the way,\u201d Kimmel started off. \u201cBut this one\u2019s the hardest because late last night, early this morning, we lost someone very special who was much too young to go. And I\u2019d like to tell you about him, if you don\u2019t mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Kimmel continued, he recalled first meeting Escobedo, who grew up not far from the late night host in Las Vegas, Nevada.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/figure>\n \u201cWe became friends and not just regular friends. We became like 24\/7, \u2018Mom please let me sleep over,\u2019 kind of friends,\u201d Kimmel recalled. \u201cOne summer I slept over at the Escobedo house 33 nights in a row. For real. 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, cause we were never bored. We were always up to something.\u201d<\/p>\n Per Kimmel, he and Escobedo used to get into all sorts of high jinks, including playing pranks on the neighbors and knocking the wind out of each other.<\/p>\n While Kimmel noted that Escobedo was \u201cwild\u201d in his youth, the late night host remembered his friends as a dedicated father and family man.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had so many adventures. We would laugh so hard,\u201d Kimmel added. \u201cWe had our own language that like almost no one else understood. We didn\u2019t have to say anything. We\u2019d sit here at rehearsal every day. We didn\u2019t have to look at each other.\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, Escobedo was so important to Kimmel that the latter said he made it his mission to bring him along when he landed his ABC late night show. Kimmel, who praised Escobedo as a \u201cphenomenal saxophone player,\u201d had to \u201cwork up the nerve\u201d to ask the network to cast his best friend as bandleader.<\/p>\n \u201cI knew, \u2018My best friend from growing up plays the saxophone. He could lead the band,\u2019 wasn\u2019t a great pitch,\u201d he shared. \u201cBut it had to happen. And, not only did I want Cleto to lead the band, I wanted his dad to be in the band.\u201d<\/p>\n From there, Kimmel said he orchestrated an audition for the Escobedo father-son duo, who nailed it. Kimmel noted, \u201cI\u2019ve 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Later on, Kimmel thanked the medical team that looked after Escobedo before his death and expressed gratitude for the number of years they had together.<\/p>\n Kimmel\u2019s speech comes hours after he penned a lengthy tribute to the musician on Instagram, where he remembered him as a \u201cgreat friend, father, son, musician and man.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTo say that we are heartbroken is an understatement,\u201d he further wrote. \u201cCleto 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\u2019s wife, children and parents in your prayers.\u201d<\/p>\n Watch Kimmel\u2019s full poignant monologue above.<\/p>\n The post Jimmy Kimmel Fights Back Tears to Give the \u2018Hardest\u2019 Monologue of His Career: \u2018We Lost Someone Very Special\u2019 | Video<\/a> appeared first on TheWrap<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jimmy Kimmel paid tribute to his longtime friend and bandleader Cleto Escobedo III during Tuesday night\u2019s monologue. The comedian struggled to fight back tears as he opened \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live,\u201d sharing with his audience that he lost someone very dear to him. \u201cWe\u2019ve been on the air for almost 23 years and I\u2019ve had to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2143131,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[411160,23060],"class_list":["post-2150757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-cleto-escobedo","tag-jimmy-kimmel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/7-Movies-You-Didnt-Know-Were-Adapted-From-Stephen-King.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2150757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2150757"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2150757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2150758,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2150757\/revisions\/2150758"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2143131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2150757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2150757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2150757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}