Mr. Kimmel said that he and Mr. Escobedo, who led Cleto and the Cletones on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” had been “inseparable since I was 9 years old.”
Cleto Escobedo III, a saxophonist whose childhood friendship with the comedian Jimmy Kimmel led to a decades-long role as the leader of the house band on Mr. Kimmel’s late night show, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” died on Tuesday. He was 59.
Mr. Kimmel announced the death on Instagram. He did not cite a cause or say where Mr. Escobedo had died.
Mr. Escobedo’s band, Cleto and the Cletones, has been with “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” since the show’s inception in 2003, but his association with Mr. Kimmel dated to their time growing up together in Las Vegas.
“Cleto and I have been inseparable since I was 9 years old,” Mr. Kimmel wrote on Instagram. “The fact that we got to work together every day is a dream neither of us could ever have imagined would come true.”
In a 2013 interview with Variety, Mr. Kimmel recalled that Mr. Escobedo was a “musical prodigy.”
“When ABC offered me my show, I prayed that they’d let me hire Cleto, and to my amazement they agreed, sight unseen,” Mr. Kimmel said. To ensure that the network would stick with the band, Mr. Kimmel said he had taken ABC executives — including Lloyd Braun, the chairman of the network’s entertainment division at the time — to see Mr. 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,” Mr. Kimmel told Variety.
Cleto Valentine Escobedo III was born Aug. 23, 1966, in Las Vegas, the only child of Sylvia Escobedo and Cleto Escobedo Jr. The elder Mr. Escobedo was also a saxophonist who would later join his son in the Cletones, and Mr. Escobedo said his father’s influence had been a driving force in his decision to become a musician.
“There was music everywhere,” he said of his childhood in an interview with the podcast “The Jake Feinberg Show” last year. “I distinctly remember my dad was playing in Hawaii. I was 5 years old and watching his band and him play, and I used to get teared up watching my dad play. I was so excited by the music of it all.”
Mr. Escobedo was studying at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, when he began gigging along the Las Vegas Strip. His first big break came in 1990, when he landed an audition to join Paula Abdul’s touring band. A world tour with Ms. Abdul led to a record deal with Virgin Records, and tours with other artists, including Luis Miguel and Marc Anthony. He was touring with Mr. Anthony when he got a call from Mr. Kimmel asking him to lead the band on his new show, Mr. Escobedo recalled in an oral history interview with Texas Tech University in 2022.
“We used to order cabs for people on our block, like, really late,” Mr. Escobedo recalled. “I don’t know, we used to all do the normal crank calls.”
But mostly, he said, the duo “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.”
Mr. Kimmel paid tribute to Mr. Escobedo on his show when Mr. Escobedo turned 50. Their “lifetime of friendship,” he said, “was highlighted by the kind of torture” that only “an older brother can inflict on you without getting arrested.”
By the time Mr. Kimmel hired Mr. Escobedo as his bandleader, Mr. Escobedo’s father had retired from playing and was working backstage at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. Mr. Kimmel suggested that his friend bring the elder Mr. Escobedo into the band. Playing on the television show became 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 Mr. Kimmel: “I’m playing music with my son on a show with my other son. If I screw up a couple notes, Cleto won’t fire me. There’s not another son and dad on late-night TV.”
Mr. Escobedo’s survivors include his parents; his wife, Lori; and his children, Cruz and Jesse.
The younger Mr. Escobedo’s boyhood friendship with Mr. Kimmel made him a staple on one of the longest-running comedy institutions in television.
“There’s only a handful of these gigs in this country,” he told Texas Tech University, “so I’m very fortunate to have one.”
