Arthur "Skip" John Maggiora

Arthur “Skip” Maggiora, who through the music stores that bear his name equipped top-tier professionals and embraced generations of aspiring musicians and countless weekend garage warriors in becoming a Sacramento music icon, has died.

Maggiora died Feb. 23, 2023, after a long battle with kidney disease, Skip’s Music announced in a Facebook post. He was 75.

Maggiora’s Skip’s Music, for decades a vital component of Sacramento’s music scene, has long been a haven for its players in rock, jazz and beyond. Skip’s Music, which has locations in Arden Arcade and Elk Grove, celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2023.

“With a career spanning more than 50 years, Skip is a local icon, leaving behind a legacy of contributions and achievements in the music industry and as a local business owner,” Skip’s Music’s vice president, Mike Snyder, said on Maggiora’s passing. “He was a visionary who always contemplated the next move. He established himself early as a dependable and reliable resource for the professional and hobbyist musician.”

For a half-century, Skip’s Music has been synonymous with capital music making.

A lifelong Sacramento resident, Arthur Maggiora, the man Sacramento and the national music community would forever come to know as “Skip,” grew up around music. He worked in a local music store and performed as part of a popular local rock act while working his way through college opening for Jimi Hendrix and psychedelic San Francisco rockers Big Brother and the Holding Company.

Maggiora, shown here in 1998, opened his first store on Florin Road in Sacramento in 1973, moving Skip’s Music to its signature Auburn Boulevard location in 1980 just as Sacramento’s rock music scene was entering a fertile decade, with local acts Steel Breeze, Bourgeois Tagg and Tesla, along with guitarists Jeff Watson of Night Ranger and Dokken’s George Lynch, reaching national prominence.