Cleto Escobedo III, the bandleader of Cleto and the Cletones on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and the host’s lifelong friend, has died. He was 59 years old.
“Early this morning, we lost a great friend, father, son, musician and man, my longtime bandleader Cleto Escobedo III,” Kimmel wrote Tuesday on Instagram. “To say that we are heartbroken is an understatement. Cleto and I have been inseparable since I was 9 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.”
Escobedo and his band have been with the late night talk show since its premiere in 2003.
Before working with Kimmel, Escobedo had his own record deal and toured with artists including Earth, Wind and Fire and Paula Abdul. His father Cleto Escobedo Jr also played in Cleto and the Cletones.
Escobedo had found success in the music industry before he started as the show’s bandleader.
Deadline reported he was on tour with Marc Anthony when he got the call to be on the show, and he had toured with artists including Earth, Wind and Fire and Paula Abdul, as well as getting his own record deal.
Escobedo and Kimmel met as children in Las Vegas, where they grew up across the street from each other.
“We just met one day on the street, and there were a few kids on the street, and him and I just became really close friends, and we kind of had the same sense of humor. We just became pals, and we’ve been pals ever since,” Escobedo said in a 2022 interview for Texas Tech University’s Southwest Collection oral history archive, disclosing that he and Kimmel were huge fans of David Letterman as kids.
“Of course I wanted great musicians, but I wanted somebody I had chemistry with,” Kimmel told WABC in 2015. “And there’s nobody in my life I have better chemistry with than him.”
In 2016, on Escobedo’s 50th birthday, Kimmel dedicated a segment to his friend, recalling pranks with a BB gun or mooning people from the back of his mom’s car.
“Cleto had a bicycle with a sidecar attached to it. We called it the side hack. I would get in the sidecar and then Cleto would drive me directly into garbage cans and bushes,” Kimmel recalled.
News of Escobedo’s death comes after Thursday’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was abruptly canceled. David Duchovny, Joe Keery and Madison Beer were set as the show’s guests. The date and cause of Escobedo’s death weren’t immediately known.
Escobedo’s father is also a member of the Kimmel house band and plays tenor and alto saxophones. In January 2022, the father-son duo celebrated nearly two decades of performing on-screen together.
“Jimmy asked me, ‘Who are we going to get in the band?’ I said, ‘Well, my normal guys,’ and he knew my guys because he had been coming to see us and stuff before he was famous, just to come support me and whatever. I’d invite him to gigs, and if he didn’t have anything to do he’d come check it out, so he knew my guys,” Escobedo recounted in the 2022 interview. “Then he just said, ‘Hey, man, what about your dad? Wouldn’t that be kind of cool?’ I was like, ‘That would be way cool.’”
In the 2022 interview, Escobedo said the bandleader job had one major benefit: family time.
“Touring and all that stuff is fun, but it’s more of a young man’s game. Touring, also, too, is not really conducive for family life. I’ve learned over the years, being on the road and watching how hard it is, leaving your kids for so long. Sometimes they’re babies; you come back and then they’re talking, it’s like, ‘What?’” he said.
Escobedo’s survivors also include his wife Lori and their two children.
The Associated Press contributed to the report.
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