{"id":278663,"date":"2025-11-11T23:32:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T23:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/278663\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T23:32:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T23:32:09","slug":"jimmy-kimmel-announces-death-of-bandleader-and-close-friend-cleto-escobedo-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/278663\/","title":{"rendered":"Jimmy Kimmel announces death of bandleader and close friend Cleto Escobedo III"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cleto Escobedo III, the \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live!\u201d bandleader, died Tuesday morning, the late-night host announced. <\/p>\n

In posts on social media, Jimmy Kimmel described Escobedo as a \u201cgreat friend, father, son, musician and man.\u201d He urged his followers to keep Escobedo’s family in their thoughts. <\/p>\n

\u201cCleto and I have been inseparable since I was nine years old,\u201d Kimmel wrote. \u201cThe fact that we got to work together every day is a dream neither of us could ever have imagined would come true.\u201d <\/p>\n

The news comes after Kimmel postponed a show taping last week for a \u201cpersonal matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Escobedo, a Las Vegas native, has led Cleto and the Cletones for Kimmel’s late-night show for more than 20 years. Kimmel moved in across the street from Escobedo in 1977 when the comedian’s parents left New York for Sin City.<\/p>\n

Kimmel dedicated a segment to Escobedo in 2016<\/a> for his friend’s 50th birthday, joking that the two had the type of friendship built on \u201cthe kind of torture that you can only inflict \u2014 an older brother can inflict on you without being arrested.\u201d <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cCleto snuck into my garage and glued the steering column left or right,\u201d Kimmel said. \u201cI went right into traffic.\u201d <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

Kimmel told WABC the year before<\/a> that he knew he had to have Escobedo for his house band in 2003 when \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live!\u201d first aired. Escobedo was a \u201cchild prodigy\u201d who ended up being a professional touring musician, Kimmel said. <\/p>\n

So Kimmel took the president of ABC to see Escobedo’s band perform and \u201che loved it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course I wanted great musicians, but I wanted somebody I had chemistry with,\u201d Kimmel said. \u201cAnd there\u2019s nobody in my life I have better chemistry with than him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cleto Escobedo III, the \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live!\u201d bandleader, died Tuesday morning, the late-night host announced. In posts on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":["post-278663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}