Jimmy Kimmel remembered his dear friend, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” bandleader Cleto Escobedo III, in a lengthy eulogy on his show Tuesday night.
In posts on social media announcing Escobedo’s Tuesday death, Jimmy Kimmel described Escobedo as a “great friend, father, son, musician and man.” He urged his followers to keep Escobedo’s family in their thoughts.
“Cleto and I have been inseparable since I was nine years old,” Kimmel wrote. “The fact that we got to work together every day is a dream neither of us could ever have imagined would come true.”
“Early this morning, we lost someone very special who was much too young to go,” Kimmel said through tears at the top of his Tuesday night show.
“Everyone loves Cleto. Everyone here at the show. We’re devastated by this. It’s just not fair. He was the nicest, most humble, kind and always funny person,” Kimmel said.
Kimmel on the show recalled the shenanigans the two boys would get into while growing up together, and detailed how he followed in his friend’s footsteps, copying his fashion choices and hairstyles, following him through workouts at the gym and sharing moments at parties and through hobbies they had in common.
“We had our own language that almost no one else understood,” Kimmel said, something that lasted until Escobedo’s death. “We didn’t have to say anything… 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.”
The news comes after Kimmel postponed a show taping last week for a “personal matter.”
Kimmel said Tuesday night that the show would be taking a few nights off due to Escobedo’s passing.
Escobedo, a Las Vegas native, has led Cleto and the Cletones for Kimmel’s late-night show for more than 20 years.
“Cleto was a phenomenal saxophone player from a very young age. He was a child prodigy. He would get standing ovations in junior high school, if you can imagine that,” Kimmel said of his late friend. Escobedo toured with Paula Abdul, playing saxophone and singing at her shows, and later, Abdul signed him to a record label where he created an album.
Kimmel moved in across the street from Escobedo in 1977 when the comedian’s parents left New York for Sin City.
“Eventually, we met, we became friends, and not just regular friends. We became like 24/7, ‘mom, please let me sleep over, please,’ kind of friends,” Kimmel recalled during his Tuesday night monologue. He said one summer, he slept over at his friend’s house 33 nights in a row.
Kimmel dedicated a segment to Escobedo in 2016 for his friend’s 50th birthday, joking that the two had the type of friendship built on “the kind of torture that you can only inflict — an older brother can inflict on you without being arrested.”
He teased his friend about times when Kimmel rode in the sidecar of Escobedo’s bicycle just for Escobedo to steer him into trash cans. Kimmel told one story about a time when he built a go-kart out of wood as a child, only to be sabotaged by his buddy.
“Cleto snuck into my garage and glued the steering column left or right,” Kimmel said. “I went right into traffic.”
At the end of the segment, Kimmel shared photos of the two men from their time growing up together. One of the photos was of them playing music together, with Kimmel on the clarinet and Escobedo on the saxophone.
Kimmel told WABC the year before that he knew he had to have Escobedo for his house band in 2003 when “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” first aired. So Kimmel took the president of ABC to see Escobedo’s band perform and “he loved it.”
“Of course I wanted great musicians, but I wanted somebody I had chemistry with,” Kimmel said. “And there’s nobody in my life I have better chemistry with than him.”
“The idea that anyone other than him would lead the band was terrifying,” Kimmel said Tuesday night, remembering the original iteration of the show’s band — including Escobedo’s father. “And we’ve been working together every day for almost 23 years.”