Art and Soul

Candelario Delgado probably was looking down and smiling the other night when his family threw a party in the backyard of their new guitar shop.

Two years ago, as he was dying from cancer at 52, Candelario said his only wishes were for his family to take care of each other, and for his sons to carry on the family tradition of building guitars by hand.

Today, 31-year-old Monica, 29-year-old Tomas, 27-year-old Manuel and their mother, Marta, are full of optimism. They have moved the family shop to a slightly bigger location in East L.A., four doors up Cesar Chavez Avenue from where Candelario and his father, Porfirio, had built guitars since the 1940s. To celebrate the move, they hosted a fiesta for a couple of hundred friends. Marta wore a red dress and smiled all evening.

Her 85-year-old father-in-law was there to pass on the torch.

“Ahora son mis nietos los que seguiran,” said the fragile-looking man. “Now my grandsons will continue with the family tradition.” He wished them good luck making fine guitars. City officials honored the family, and the police brought a plaque in memory of Candelario, who for years coached Los Angeles Police Department officers in boxing.

Candelas Guitars actually was started in Mexico in 1928, by Porfirio and his older brother, Candelario (who died in El Paso in 1983 at 72). The business moved to California in 1945, after the brothers realized they had a market here.

In the 71-year history of the business, the Delgados’ clients have ranged from Andres Segovia to the legendary Latin group Los Romeros to Arlo Guthrie. At the party, Los Lobos--who have bought guitars from the Delgados since the band members were students at Garfield High--played sentimental Mexican songs as they paid tribute to the family.

“When Candy passed away, I know it was hard on the family,” said Los Lobos guitarist-singer David Hidalgo. “I’m happy they have decided to go on. They’re family to us.”

As children, Tomas had hoped to become a football player, Manuel a police officer. But eventually they realized there was no better job for them than working together at the shop that holds the family’s heritage.

“Sometimes, it’s like we don’t even need words,” Manuel says. “I walked by [Tomas] the other day, and he just gave me a high-five. And I knew he was saying, ‘Hey, man, this is cool. We’re working together. I like having you here.’ ”

They Started in Furniture Repair

Before there was guitar-making for the Delgados, there was furniture repair.

At the start of 1928, Porfirio was mending muebles in his native Torreon, Coahuila, in northern Mexico. But customers knew he was good with wood and began bringing their guitars to his shop, so he learned to repair them too.

The brothers had a musical group of their own--Los Candelas--that played boleros, romantic ballads dating to the ‘20s. Porfirio made a guitar to play in the band, and someone offered to buy it. It wasn’t long before he and Candelario were making guitars full time. They opened their first shop in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, and named it El Taller Candelas (the Candelas Shop), after their band.

They began sending instruments to Los Angeles in the early ‘40s and came here in 1945. First, they found a merchant downtown on Broadway who offered to pay them $3 for each ukulele they made. Then, in 1948, they opened their own shop at 2718 Brooklyn Ave., now Cesar Chavez.

Candelario worked here as well as in Ciudad Juarez and later at shops he and his brother owned in Tijuana and El Paso. Porfirio stayed mostly in L.A. with his wife and son, who’d been born the year before they left Mexico. Porfirio had named the boy after his brother.

In 1967, young Candelario was 23 and working in electronics after a stint in the U.S. Army. One night, he came to see his uncle and found him working in the loneliness of the quiet shop. The business was struggling.

Young Calendario decided to come work with his family.

He Fought Cancer for Two Years

The Delgados are no strangers to sadness, especially Marta, at least not since just before Thanksgiving in 1994.

Till then, her 6-foot-4-inch Candelario had never been sick in the 26 years they’d been married. The stubborn man broke his shoulder once, in a motorcycle accident, and let it heal without seeing a doctor.

But lately he’d been feeling weak.

Marta accompanied him to the doctor, who told them it was advanced cancer.

The road back to their home in Hacienda Heights seemed endless, Marta remembers.

“The doctor told him honestly that he couldn’t be cured. But [Candelario] said, ‘Esa no es la ultima palabra. Voy a pelear.’

“That’s not the last word. I’m going to fight.”

After the first operation Candelario was given six months to live. He lived more than two years. Throughout all his operations and treatments, he never let his friends and clients know that he was dying.

He was admitted back into the hospital on Dec. 5, 1996, and entered the operating room for the last time on Dec. 18.

“He was casual about it,” Tomas recalls. “He said, ‘I’ll be right out, mijo.’ ”

More than 300 people came to Candelario’s funeral. He was remembered as a world-class guitar maker, husband, father and friend.

Tomas already had been working at the shop.

Manuel was working at a car dealership. His father died on a Wednesday. He showed up at the shop on Monday.

Some of the Guitars Are Custom-Made

Since January, Candelas Guitars has been operating at 2724 Cesar Chavez Ave. Tomas and Manuel work in the back room. Marta, tending the front desk, can see them through a glass partition.

Two other men work with the family. Jesus Garibay has been there for 30 years and Jesus Alvarez for 15. Together, the team makes about 200 guitars a year, ranging in price from $400 to $6,000. Most are sold from the shop. But one in four is custom-made for particular clients.

For these special orders, Tomas looks at the client’s physical makeup. He asks what kind of music he or she plays, what kind of sound he or she wants.

The woods come from all over the world. There’s German spruce; mahogany from Honduras; cypress from Mexico; cedar from Mexico, Canada and Oregon; rosewood from India, and more. The artwork can be pretty detailed, and time-consuming.

The clientele are mostly Latino artists, such as Los Lobos and Jose Feliciano. But there have been others. There was English rock star Paul Young (“Everytime You Go Away”), who ran into Los Lobos during a tour in 1995 and asked them where they got their bajo sexto--an acoustic 12-string bass guitar most commonly used in Tex-Mex music.

Los Lobos told him about the Delgados in East L.A. Young came here and tried finding the shop three times, driving up and down Cesar Chavez without any luck. Finally, he called on his cell phone and asked Tomas to stand outside.

“To me, he was like Joe Young, Mike Young,” Tomas says. “I didn’t know who Paul Young was.”

No Premade Parts for These Guys

It’s the family’s tradition of handcrafting the instruments that keeps Candelas Guitars thriving, Tomas says. He considers himself and Manuel fortunate that his father and grandfather taught them this art.

In the 1960s, large companies and small shops alike began using sophisticated machinery or buying premade parts to increase production. But the elder Delgados resisted.

“Stepping into the shop in the ‘80s, I would say, ‘Pop, why are we doing it like this?’ ” Tomas recalls. “I would try to get him to change his ideas, but eventually I understood why we kept doing things by hand. He took pride in saying we designed and built all the instruments.”

The older Delgados also preserved for Tomas and Manuel the art of making instruments used in traditional Latin music--instruments that hadn’t been very popular in the United States.

Candelas made its name with such instruments as requintos romanticos--small, melodic guitars--for such legendary trios as Los Panchos and Los Diamantes. Now that instruments like these are in vogue (particularly those used in mariachi music), Tomas and Manuel know how to make them.

Hanging from the shop’s walls with the regular guitars are guitarrones (bulky mariachi bass guitars), jaranas (eight-stringed instruments used to provide harmonies), vihuelas (five-stringed harmony instruments) and others.

Marta Keeps Her Husband’s Memory Alive

Tomas says the men in the family tend to get all the attention, but he points to his mother as the pillar.

At the store entrance, Marta welcomes clients in a voice that sounds particularly warm in Spanish. She talks with motherly pride about her sons and daughter. And above all, she likes to keep her husband’s memory alive.

Making sure a stranger knows that Manuel also writes songs, she urges her son to sing one--the one he wrote for his dad. But she has to walk out of the room. It still gets to her every time.

Marta is 53, a year younger than her husband would have been. After he died, she couldn’t come to the shop for a year. When she finally mustered the courage, she walked in and saw her father-in-law at work. It was like seeing her Candelario. She rushed out to the back patio and cried.

It’s still hard today.

Manuel looks like his dad when he’s working. Sometimes Marta watches him through the glass, his head bent down. Measuring. Sanding. On a recent Saturday, he had to drop off the family’s old truck for a smog check. Marta followed in a car so she could bring him back. Through the truck’s rear window she could see how his shoulders, his ears--even his movements as he turned the wheel--resembled his dad’s. When Manuel got in her car, she wept.

“I try not to cry because it makes [them] feel bad,” Marta says. “But I can’t forget him. They say it takes time.”

No lo creo, she says with a sad smile. I don’t believe it.

Marta was born in Guanajuato and raised in the Mexican state of Sonora until she was 12 and her family came to work in the mining towns of Arizona. Her family moved to Culver City when she was 17; she met Candelario at a Mexican club on Sunset Boulevard five years later.

He was a hard worker. He and Marta never took a vacation until the children were grown. Through the ‘60s and ‘70s, Candelas Guitars prospered. Until the early ‘80s, when the workload just became too big, the family had two other stores in Los Angeles--at Sunset and Fairfax and Sunset and Figueroa--along with the ones in Tijuana and El Paso. But Marta was the busiest Delgado of them all, working at the shops and tending to her family.

“I always wanted to work [full time], but now I thank God I decided to stay home with my children,” she says. “When my kids got home, I was always there. They brought the whole football team, and they ate together.”

“We were fortunate,” Monica adds, “that my mom was home to keep a very stable home life for us.”

The Family Has Stayed Very Close

Indeed, Candelario would be happy to know that his family is as close as ever.

Manuel, who is not married, has come back to live with his mother. Marta’s mother, Rosario Loredo, also has moved in. Monica--who is studying for a doctorate in psychology--and her husband live just minutes away. Tomas and his wife, Alegria, 22, live in West Covina.

Marta and her sons often carpool to the shop. They stay until--whenever. Sometimes until late at night, working without speaking, not needing words, as mariachi music plays in the background.