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Authors: Graham Landrum
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GARCÃA
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Hornsby Roadhever
I am writing this at the request of Mrs. Helen Delaporte, who as I understand it intends to include it in the minutes of her DAR chapter.
I am Hornsby Roadheaver of the Roadheaver Agency in San Francisco. I manage between fifty and sixty of the biggest names in music and dance on the West Coast. I book my artists with the Community Series Inc. and with all the big symphonies and civic opera companies in the United States and Canada. Lately I have booked several concert tours in Europe.
I began handling Luis Garcia seventeen years ago. Since that time he has averaged about ten concerts a year. Over the years he has made in the neighborhood of $180,000 with me, and I donât have to tell you it has been profitable for me also.
Lu was a different sort of fellow. You could say that about any of my artists, but Lu was not only different from ordinary people, he was different from other artists. I would say he was
proudânot proud in the same way all artists are, but proud in his own way.
You take a soprano who has a few notes above high C. There is something about that that she just canât get over. Every third sentence she speaks for the rest of her life will have something about âmy careerâ in it. She canât find anything good to say about any other soprano, unless she is being interviewed on TVâbut thatâs another matter.
You never saw a man as polite as Lu was. There was no respect he demanded for himself that he didnât show to other people. Dapperâgood looking in a wayâhe was just something you donât run into except in old novelsâmaybe like The Count of Monte CristoâI think thatâs the title of it.
You would never say I was close to Luânobody wasâbut weâve had dinner, cocktails, whatever else together for all those years. He was always friendly. But in spite of that, we never quite managed to become real friendsâyou know.
Still, I liked the guy; and when I read that he had passed away, well, just thinking of the guy himself, the first thought that came to me was: âIâm sorry. Something important got away from me again. It was too bad I hadnât known him better.â It wasnât till a couple days later that I thought about how much money I was kissing good-bye.
But after all, our relationship had been business; and even though he was now dead, the business was unfinished. There was an agent in Madrid who would be getting nervous, and he would be screaming pretty soon because Lu did not show up.
You see, what Lu had planned to do was to take rooms in Madrid, where he could rest up and practice before he began the tour.
So there would be no reason for me or anyone else to miss Lu (he had no family here) until almost time for his first concert.
It was a real shock to learn from the morning paper that one of my very own artists had been murdered.
It took me about an hour to realize that it was up to me to do something about it. You see, he lived down there in Santa Barbara. I knew he didnât have any family, and I didnât have the ghost of an idea who his lawyer was or his accountant. He had a little school down thereâjust his ownâjust harp and nothing else.
But you see, I had that number, and I called it.
The voice that belonged to the second in command down there sounded very sweet and very young to me. âDear,â I said, âhow old are you?â
âWhat is this?â The voice didnât sound quite so sweet anymore.
âWell,â I said, âif you are forty-five, I have an unpleasant task to dump on you: notifying some people in Europe that since they are not going to be seeing Lu Garcia after all, they had better send his baggage back and who knows what else (I never had an artist die like this before); but if you are under twenty-four, Iâll do it myself.â
âIâm twenty-six,â she said.
âI think
Â
Â
Hornsby Roadhever
I am writing this at the request of Mrs. Helen Delaporte, who as I understand it intends to include it in the minutes of her DAR chapter.
I am Hornsby Roadheaver of the Roadheaver Agency in San Francisco. I manage between fifty and sixty of the biggest names in music and dance on the West Coast. I book my artists with the Community Series Inc. and with all the big symphonies and civic opera companies in the United States and Canada. Lately I have booked several concert tours in Europe.
I began handling Luis Garcia seventeen years ago. Since that time he has averaged about ten concerts a year. Over the years he has made in the neighborhood of $180,000 with me, and I donât have to tell you it has been profitable for me also.
Lu was a different sort of fellow. You could say that about any of my artists, but Lu was not only different from ordinary people, he was different from other artists. I would say he was
proudânot proud in the same way all artists are, but proud in his own way.
You take a soprano who has a few notes above high C. There is something about that that she just canât get over. Every third sentence she speaks for the rest of her life will have something about âmy careerâ in it. She canât find anything good to say about any other soprano, unless she is being interviewed on TVâbut thatâs another matter.
You never saw a man as polite as Lu was. There was no respect he demanded for himself that he didnât show to other people. Dapperâgood looking in a wayâhe was just something you donât run into except in old novelsâmaybe like The Count of Monte CristoâI think thatâs the title of it.
You would never say I was close to Luânobody wasâbut weâve had dinner, cocktails, whatever else together for all those years. He was always friendly. But in spite of that, we never quite managed to become real friendsâyou know.
Still, I liked the guy; and when I read that he had passed away, well, just thinking of the guy himself, the first thought that came to me was: âIâm sorry. Something important got away from me again. It was too bad I hadnât known him better.â It wasnât till a couple days later that I thought about how much money I was kissing good-bye.
But after all, our relationship had been business; and even though he was now dead, the business was unfinished. There was an agent in Madrid who would be getting nervous, and he would be screaming pretty soon because Lu did not show up.
You see, what Lu had planned to do was to take rooms in Madrid, where he could rest up and practice before he began the tour.
So there would be no reason for me or anyone else to miss Lu (he had no family here) until almost time for his first concert.
It was a real shock to learn from the morning paper that one of my very own artists had been murdered.
It took me about an hour to realize that it was up to me to do something about it. You see, he lived down there in Santa Barbara. I knew he didnât have any family, and I didnât have the ghost of an idea who his lawyer was or his accountant. He had a little school down thereâjust his ownâjust harp and nothing else.
But you see, I had that number, and I called it.
The voice that belonged to the second in command down there sounded very sweet and very young to me. âDear,â I said, âhow old are you?â
âWhat is this?â The voice didnât sound quite so sweet anymore.
âWell,â I said, âif you are forty-five, I have an unpleasant task to dump on you: notifying some people in Europe that since they are not going to be seeing Lu Garcia after all, they had better send his baggage back and who knows what else (I never had an artist die like this before); but if you are under twenty-four, Iâll do it myself.â
âIâm twenty-six,â she said.
âI think
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