SKIP MAGGIORA AND HIS NAMESAKE SHOP INSPIRED COUNTLESS MUSICIANS. NOW HIS HISTORIC ASSEMBLAGE WILL BENEFIT MUSIC CHARITIES.
By Tommy Noel
Eric Gutierrez remembers shopping at Skip’s Music from the time he was 14 years old. During one visit to the Sacramento mainstay, the store’s owner, Arthur “Skip” Maggiora, who had long been known for his ability to recognize talent, told Gutierrez that when he was old enough, he, too, could work at the store. Now 31, the guitar repair technician has been an employee at Skip’s Music for more than a decade. “Here I am, years later,” Gutierrez says, “fixing up the guitars in the shop.”
Maggiora opened Skip’s Music in 1973, and it soon became a hub for aspiring musicians like the young Gutierrez, as well as garage band enthusiasts and industry professionals alike. When Maggiora died last year at 75 after a long battle with kidney disease, there was no shortage of tributes to the popular store owner. The Sacramento Bee hailed him as a “Sacramento icon.” The Sacramento News & Review celebrated him as someone “who created an enduring culture.” And the San Juan Education Foundation, which inducted Maggiora into its 2024 Stars Hall of Fame, remembered him as an ardent supporter of live music who was often backstage at local gigs “supporting music making and/or helping to solve issues that might arise related to the stage equipment.”
Creed Maggiora with his father’s first guitar, a 1960 Hofner Red Solid Body Electric Guitar. In a binder filled with photos of Maggiora’s collection, next to a picture of this guitar, the store owner wrote, ‘Bought with paper route money.’ Photo by Tommy Noel.
In short, Maggiora was as essential to music-making in California’s capital city as the instruments he sold and the sounds they made. He was “one of a kind, driven like no other,” says Maggiora’s son Creed. “Music was his passion and teaching early on.” Upon his father’s passing, Creed received hundreds of messages from Maggiora’s friends and fans. “You could really see how he touched people’s hearts and inspired them,” he says.
Maggiora’s gift will endure: On December 17, during The Skip Maggiora Legacy Guitar Collection Charity Signature® Auction, Heritage Auctions will offer 150 guitars from his collection in an event that will benefit charitable causes that align with his vision of promoting music education. In 1981, Maggiora founded an annual summer youth program called Stairway to Stardom and, later, its adult counterpart Weekend Warriors.
“We are honored to present Skip’s collection, especially given its beneficiaries – future generations of music-makers,” says Aaron Piscopo, Heritage’s Director of Vintage Guitars & Musical Instruments. “Skip was a legend in Northern California and across the country, with Skip’s Music standing as a landmark in Sacramento. Cataloging and showcasing these guitars has been a true pleasure.”
Maggiora’s 1954 Fender Stratocaster in its iconic Sunburst finish
A rare 1955 Fender Stratocaster in a custom metallic green finish
The collection, of course, is extraordinary, befitting Maggiora’s five decades on the Sacramento music scene.
Highlights include a 1954 Fender Stratocaster Sunburst Solid Body Electric Guitar that hails from the first year of the guitar’s production; an extraordinarily rare 1955 Fender Stratocaster Metallic Green Solid Body Electric Guitar, one of only a few examples documented from a period when custom colors were hard to come by; and a Mosrite Ventures Black Solid Body Electric Guitar believed to be either a 1963 prototype or one of the first 80 produced in 1964. The auction also features eight instruments that once belonged to Billie “Tiny” Moore, the Port Arthur, Texas, native who played electric mandolin and fiddle with Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys in the 1940s and joined Merle Haggard’s band The Strangers in the 1970s.
Maggiora wasn’t just a seller of instruments. He was a player, too, having worked his way through college opening for Jimi Hendrix and Big Brother and the Holding Company featuring another Port Arthur native, Janis Joplin. That reputation – that legacy – is on full display in this auction, in the guitars offered and in the young people who will benefit from its proceeds.
“It didn’t matter how old you were. He would always make sure people were taken care of,” Gutierrez says of Maggiora. “Getting to know him – it’s something I’m going to look back on the rest of my life and treasure.”
As for his father’s collection, Creed hopes the guitars will end up in the hands of players, which his dad would have wanted. “They have souls,” he says. And stories left to tell.
TOMMY NOEL is a Video Production Specialist at Heritage Auctions.