Jimmy Kimmel delivers 22-minute eulogy for best friend

John Katsilometes, Tribune News Service

It was a moment so powerful you had to hit pause, on the video and in life. Jimmy Kimmel remembered his best friend and talk show bandleader Cleto Escobedo III on Tuesday night. Escobedo died that morning after a lengthy illness. He was 59. Escobedo was a master sax player and the architect of the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” band Cleto and the Cletones, which featured his father, Cleto Escobedo Jr., also on sax.

When Kimmel took the stage to a standing ovation, it was clear this would be no ordinary monologue. It was a 22-minute eulogy for the man who was Kimmel’s best friend since he was 9 years old and Escobedo was 10. That’s when Kimmel and his family moved from Brooklyn to a tract home in the Spring Valley subdivision. “We’ve been on the air for almost 23 years, and I’ve had to do some hard monologues along the way, but this one is the hardest,” Kimmel, his voice already wavering, said at the top. “Late last night, early this morning, we lost someone much too young to go, and I’d like to tell you about him, if you don’t mind.”

Kimmel recalled moving across the country from Brooklyn to Las Vegas and growing up on Meadowlark Lane. “There was a boy who lived on my block ... he lived across the street and two houses over. He was a year older than me, his name was Cleto, but we called him “Junior,” even though his father was Cleto II and he was the third. Cleto, as he would say, was ‘Cleto Valentine Escobedo III.’” The two soon met and became best friends. “Not just regular friends, we became like 24/7 friends, ‘Mom, let me sleep over, please let me sleep over’ type friends,” Kimmel said, sharing that over one summer he slept over at the Escobedo house 33 times.

“My mother used to make me get down on my knees and beg to sleep at his house, in front of him,” Kimmel said. “And I would gladly do it.”

The two got into mischief at all hours. “We were never bored, we were always up to something, Wiffle ball on the front lawn, Nerf football in the street, we’d dress as cowboys, we set fire to Hot Wheels,” Kimmel said. “Cleto had a warped secondhand pool table in his garage, we’d shoot pool, we would box in his backyard, we boxed in his bedroom — we definitely gave each other many concussions.”

The two made crank calls through the night, recording as they ordered pizzas to be delivered at their neighbors’ houses. Kimmel later developed the sketch show “Crank Yankers,” along with Adam Carolla and Daniel Kellison, from these experiences (puppets from the series are displayed at Jimmy Kimmel’s Comedy Club on the Strip).

Escobedo was a ladies man even as a youngster, blow-drying his hair to look like John Travolta’s Tony Manero in “Saturday Night Fever.” He wore a tie to school just to look cool.

“Cleto was very focused on sex, from a young age,” Kimmel said. “He knew everything about sex, and he taught me all of it. Half of everything he taught me was wrong, sometimes dangerously wrong.”

Escobedo’s family was inherently musical. His father was a member of the great Texas band Los Blues. But the elder Escobedo quit the band in 1966 when Cleto was born, focusing on raising his kid and working as a busboy at Caesars Palace. Sammy Davis Jr. recognized the elder Escobedo and hired him as his personal room service butler. Kimmel has said the first concert he ever saw was Sammy at Caesars’ Circus Maximus.

The younger Escobedo had inherited his father’s passion and acumen on the sax. He became a popular lounge and bar performer around Las Vegas. Paula Abdul discovered him, snapping him up to sing and play sax on tour. Kimmel played a clip of Escobedo onstage with Abdul, his wavy, long hair the butt of jokes as the two grew older. Escobedo also played with Marc Anthony, Luis Miguel and Philip Bailey.