Jimmy Kimmel Delivers Heartfelt On-Air Farewell to Cleto Escobedo

Only on late-night television will you see anything like Tuesday night’s edition of Jimmy Kimmel Live!

There was a host, reaching through the screen and grabbing viewers by the throat and the heart, connecting with his audience in the way only great broadcasters can—by making you feel he’s an old friend you’ve known forever.

Jimmy Kimmel has had an unusual number of those moments in his late-night career, one very recently. All of them have been moving and memorable.

Maybe it’s because he is, on camera and off, a genuine person—sincere, unafraid to show the world who he is and what he cares about. He’s also an emotional guy who fights the tears—and always loses.

Last night, in a spectacular hour of live-on-tape TV, Kimmel exchanged his opening monologue for a heart-rending, funny, totally captivating eulogy to the closest friend of his life, his bandleader Cleto Escobedo, who passed away early Tuesday in Los Angeles.

I met Cleto the first time I wrote about Jimmy, in the week before his premiere on ABC in January 2003. Their closeness was immediately apparent and obviously soul-deep—the kind of friendship that feels permanent from the start.

It was an “always-have-your-back” kind of thing. Cleto was always there at the show, always playing a crucial role, a rock of support for the then-struggling host.

Jimmy touched on that and much more in his tribute. The details he laid out—familiar to anyone who’s shared the adventures of life with one special friend—were appropriately intimate, affecting, raunchy, and hilarious.

They lived across the street from each other in Las Vegas, quickly growing so close that Kimmel said he once slept over at Cleto’s house 33 straight nights. They played sports together, got the same haircuts. They got in trouble together, played music together, watched TV together—especially David Letterman’s first late-night show on NBC, which became an obsession.

That they wound up sharing the stage of a late-night show themselves is the kind of destiny story that usually gets cut out of fiction on the grounds of utter improbability.

Jimmy was a surprise choice to get a late-night show on ABC, and he recounted his shot-in-the-dark request to his ABC patron, former network president Lloyd Braun, to have his childhood friend lead the band.

“We grew up watching Dave and Paul [Shaffer],” Kimmel said, “and the idea that anyone other than him would lead the band was terrifying.”

And then it happened. Bringing Cleto on also opened the door for Cleto’s father, Cleto Sr.—another sax artist who had given up music to stay close to his family—to return to performing in “Cleto and the Cletones.”

No show has ever been more family-oriented than Kimmel’s, which from the beginning has been packed with his relatives. Cleto was Jimmy’s surrogate big brother, and his mother and father were part of the package: his dad in the band; his mom, Sylvia, as Kimmel pointed out last night, always in the same seat, “working those rosary beads in the audience every night.”

They were both there last night, on camera, hours after losing their son—Sylvia acknowledging Jimmy’s generous shout-out, Cleto Sr. smiling through Jimmy’s warm recollections. Cleto Sr. later played a jazzy sax solo during one of the show’s breaks. That any of them got through all of it without melting in grief was some kind of astonishing throwback to “the show must go on.”

Most of Jimmy’s monologue was joyous—a celebration of Cleto’s life—but inevitably the emotion spilled over. “Everyone loves Cleto,” Kimmel said. “We are devastated by this. It’s just not fair. He was the nicest, most humble, kind and always funny person.”

Who also, he added next, loved to moon people.

A few clips captured Cleto at his craft, including an early one of him playing and singing with Paula Abdul on tour long before there was ever a late-night gig.

Fans of the show remember there was an earlier on-air eulogy Jimmy had to deliver, when his Uncle Frank—a constant presence in the show’s early years, and another truly lovely guy—passed away in 2011.

Frank died on Cleto’s birthday, Jimmy noted. Just past midnight Tuesday, Cleto passed away on Frank’s.

This really is an astonishingly family-centric television show.

Kimmel had set up this week as an ambitious tribute to the 1980s, complete with new set details and themed guests. Most of that is being scrapped. The show will be dark the rest of the week.

But Eddie Murphy—one of Cleto’s favorites—had already been booked, a big get for the show, and somehow Kimmel managed to conduct a warm and funny interview about his new Netflix documentary.

He drew Murphy out with unusual ease, even leading him into a quick impression of Arnold Schwarzenegger, which Murphy executed hilariously.

That’s what the best late-night hosts do. Most of the time they show off their talent and get a laugh out of you. Once in a while, they show off their humanity and share a few tears with you.

In both cases, they make you glad you stayed up and watched.

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