Jimmy Kimmel’s longtime band leader and childhood friend Cleto Escobedo III has died.
Kimmel broke the news on Instagram Tuesday, telling his followers, “Early this morning, we lost a great friend, father, son, musician and man, my longtime bandleader Cleto Escobedo III. 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.”
He added, “To say that we are heartbroken is an understatement.”
According to Page Six, Escobedo was hospitalized last week, which prompted Kimmel to cancel Thursday’s episode to be by his side—solving the “mystery” of why the late-night show ran a repeat episode at the last minute when a new one had been scheduled. The site also reports that Escobedo died from liver transplant complications.
Escobedo and Kimmel grew up across the street from one another in Las Vegas, where Kimmel said his musician best friend was a “child prodigy.”
“The whole school would gather to watch. He’d get standing ovations,” Kimmel told ABC7 in 2015. “He became a professional musician,” Kimmel said. “He toured with Earth, Wind and Fire, Paula Abdul. He had his own record deal.”
When Kimmel first got his late-night show, he knew right away that he wanted Escobedo to be the show’s musical arm. “I was nervous, because I thought they’d say ‘we don’t want your friend to be the band leader.’ So I took the president of ABC to see him play with his band, and he loved it,” he also told the outlet at the time.
Escobedo’s Cleto and the Cletones became Jimmy Kimmel Live!‘s house band from its 2003 debut. “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.”
“Jimmy is very loyal to his friends,” Escobedo told The San Fernando Sun in 2014. “He didn’t have to ask me; I would have understood if he had hired some famous guy to be his musical director. But he trusted me, and I don’t take it for granted.”
Escobedo’s father, who also plays in the house band, told the publication, “For me, as the father of young children, this is the perfect job. I can do other things if I want. But I want to stay here as long they will have me. I will always stay by Jimmy’s side.”
Escobedo’s musical accomplishments also expanded beyond Jimmy Kimmel Live! As Kimmel pointed out, Escobedo toured with major musical acts, and also released a solo jazz project in 1995 called Cleto.
