Cleto Valentine Escobedo III, a saxophonist whose childhood friendship with comedic icon Jimmy Kimmel blossomed into a decades-long role as the house band leader on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" passed away on Tuesday at the age of 59. Kimmel announced the news on Instagram, offering no cause of death or location of his passing.
Escobedo's band, Cleto and the Cletones, has been an integral part of "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" since the show's inception in 2003. However, their association dates back to their youth in Las Vegas, where Kimmel and Escobedo were inseparable since Kimmel was just 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," Kimmel wrote on Instagram.
In a 2013 interview with Variety, Kimmel recalled Escobedo as a "musical prodigy." When ABC offered him the show, he prayed that they would allow him to hire Escobedo, and to his surprise, they agreed. To ensure the network stuck with the band, Kimmel took ABC executives, including Lloyd Braun, the then-chairman of the network's entertainment division, to see Escobedo's ensemble play live. "They were blown away, and they loved the idea that he's my best friend and that his dad's also in the band," Kimmel said.
Born on August 23, 1966, in Las Vegas, Cleto Valentine Escobedo III was the only child of Sylvia Escobedo and Cleto Escobedo Jr., both saxophonists who would later join their son in the Cletones. Escobedo credited his father's influence as a driving force in his decision to become a musician. "There was music everywhere," he said in an interview with the podcast "The Jake Feinberg Show" last year. "I distinctly remember my dad playing in Hawaii when I was 5 years old, and I used to get teary-eyed watching him play. I was so excited by the music of it all."
Escobedo began gigging along the Las Vegas Strip while studying at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His first big break came in 1990 when he landed an audition to join Paula Abdul's touring band. A world tour with Abdul led to a record deal with Virgin Records and tours with other artists, including Luis Miguel and Marc Anthony. While touring with Mr. Anthony, he received a call from Kimmel asking him to lead the band on his new show.
Escobedo described their early days of friendship as full of mischief, a sign of things to come. "We used to order cabs for people on our block really late," he recalled. "I don't know, we used to all do the normal crank calls." But mostly, he said, they "mainly liked to just watch a bunch of comedy stuff, and we were big David Letterman fans when we were kids, so we'd watch a lot of that."
Kimmel paid tribute to Escobedo on his show when he turned 50, saying their "lifetime of friendship" was highlighted by the kind of "torture" that only an older brother could inflict on you without getting arrested. By the time Kimmel hired Escobedo as his bandleader, Escobedo's father had retired from playing and was working backstage at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. Kimmel suggested his friend bring the elder Escobedo into the band, making playing on the television show a family affair. "I'm in seventh heaven every night," Cleto Escobedo Jr. told The San Antonio Express-News in 2013, adding in reference to Kimmel: "I'm playing music with my son on a show with my other son. If I screw up a couple notes, Cle
