Jimmy Kimmel’s Lifelong Friend and Jimmy Kimmel Live! Band Leader Cleto Escobedo Dies at 59: ‘We Are Heartbroken’

Escobedo has been the leader of Cleto and the Cletones, the late-night show’s house band, since its 2003 premiere

From Left: Cleto Escobedo in February 2025; and with Jimmy Kimmel in April 2012.Credit :
Ethan Miller/Getty; Richard Cartwright / Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty

Cleto Escobedo III, the leader of Cleto and the Cletones, the house band on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, has died.

The artist died on Tuesday, Nov. 11 at the age of 59, Jimmy Kimmel shared in an Instagram post the same day.

“Early this morning, we lost a great friend, father, son, musician and man, my longtime bandleader Cleto Escobedo III,” Kimmel wrote. “To say that we are heartbroken is an understatement. 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. Cherish your friends and please keep Cleto’s wife, children and parents in your prayers.”

From Left: Jimmy Kimmel and Cleto Escobedo performing on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’.Randy Holmes/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty

The news follows the announcement that Jimmy Kimmel Live! was postponed on Nov. 6 due to a “personal matter” involving the host, Entertainment Weekly confirmed.

In 2016, on Escobedo’s 50th birthday, Kimmel dedicated a segment to his friend and recalled how they first met as he shared stories from their childhoods. “Cleto had a bicycle with a sidecar attached to it. We called it the side hack. I would get in the sidecar and then Cleto would drive me directly into garbage cans and bushes,” Kimmel recalled.

Escobedo “on the lawn with his BB gun just shooting at me” and that they would steal his dad’s shotgun and “shoot kites out of the sky,” the host shared, before recalling a prank a teenage Escobedo would play in the back of Kimmel’s mom’s car: “Cleto would quietly, in the back, slip out of his pants and moon people from the back of our car.”

From Left: Jimmy Kimmel and Cleto Escobedo as teenagers.Jimmy Kimmel/Instagram

Cleto and the Cletones has provided the live music for Jimmy Kimmel Live! since the show first premiered in 2003. Cleto’s dad, Cleto Escobado Sr., is also a member of the band and plays tenor and alto saxophones on Kimmel’s show.

In January 2022, the father-son duo celebrated nearly two decades of performing on-screen together. “19 years of this!! Love ya Dad,” Cleto, who played the alto, tenor and soprano saxes, wrote on Instagram alongside of a photo of him and his dad backstage at Live!.

Cleto was “a child prodigy,” Kimmel told ABC7. “The whole school would gather to watch. He’d get standing ovations. It was a crazy thing.”

From Left: Jimmy Kimmel and Cleto Escobedo in October 2024.Maddie Meyer/GettyHe “toured with Earth, Wind and Fire, Paula Abdul” and “had his own record deal” before joining Kimmel’s show, the comedian said, adding that having Cleto as his band leader was a must for him: “I’ll tell you one thing. It had to have my band leader, Cleto.”

“I was nervous, because I thought they’d say, ‘We don’t want your friend to be the band leader,’” the host told ABC7. “So I took the president of ABC to see him play with his band, and he loved it.”

Of his decision to hire Cleto, Kimmel added, “Of course I wanted great musicians, but I wanted somebody I had chemistry with. And there’s nobody in my life I have better chemistry with than him.”