Cleto Escobedo III

Did You Know?

• Escobedo first met Jimmy Kimmel in 1977 when Kimmel's family moved across the street from him in Las Vegas.
• Escobedo co-wrote the Jimmy Kimmel Live! theme song with Kimmel's brother Jonathan and Les Pierce in 2003.
• The band was renamed the Cletones after Escobedo's death.

Early life

Cleto Escobedo III came into the world on August 23, 1966, in Las Vegas, Nevada, to Cleto Jr. and Sylvia Escobedo. His dad, a musician who also worked as a valet for stars like Sammy Davis Jr. and Tom Jones, put his own career on hold to raise his son and later joined his band on Jimmy Kimmel Live! It was his mother’s idea for Cleto to learn the saxophone from his father. After high school, he went to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, playing with jazz bands and starting a political science degree before taking a semester off to go pro as a musician. He first met Jimmy Kimmel around age nine in 1977, when Kimmel’s family moved in across the street. They went to Guinn Junior High together and often stayed up late watching Late Night with David Letterman.

Career

Cleto Escobedo III spent a short time at UNLV before joining the band Santa Fe, which later became Santa Fe and The Fat City Horns. He played gigs all over Las Vegas, then hit the road with Paula Abdul in 1991 for her Spellbound tour. After that, he played with Cecilia Noël and the Wild Clams. In 2003, while touring with Marc Anthony, he got an offer to join Jimmy Kimmel on his new late-night show—they had worked together before on The Man Show.

Escobedo was thinking about quitting music at the time, so the timing was perfect. He put together Cleto and the Cletones, the house band for Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and helped write the show’s theme song with Kimmel’s brother Jonathan and Les Pierce. Over the years, he worked with bandleaders Jimmy Vivino and Paul Shaffer, and pushed for networks to pay musicians for YouTube clips. The band was on the seventh episode of the I Love Music Podcast. After Escobedo died, the group was renamed the Cletones.

Personal life and death

Escobedo and his wife Lori raised two children in Studio City. He passed away at UCLA Medical Center on November 11, 2025, at 59, following a prolonged illness. Jimmy Kimmel shared the news on social media, honored him during that night's monologue, and took two days off to grieve. The official cause was cardiogenic shock stemming from liver transplant complications, with disseminated intravascular coagulation and alcoholic cirrhosis noted as contributing factors.