n MAIN STREET
SOUNDS OF SUCCESS
Music store in Grass Valley still strumming along after nearly 45 years
BY Tom Couzens
FOGGY MOUNTAIN MUSIC
Owner: Mary Ellen Sorci
Where: 104 West Main St., Grass
Valley, Nevada County
(530) 273-6675
Website: foggymtnmusic.com/main
Founded: 1975
Business: Music store; sells and
rents instruments, offers lessons and
does repairs
WHY A MUSIC STORE?
Mary Ellen Sorci, owner of Foggy Mountain
Music in Grass Valley, shows how to play
the bouzouki.
PHOTO BY TOM COUZENS
26
comstocksmag.com | August 2019
Mary Ellen Sorci, who opened Foggy
Mountain in 1975, was raised on mu-
sic. Sorci says her mother, Marilyn Doty
Sorci, was a child prodigy violinist who
had her first performance when she
was 5 years old, and she later taught
violin at Foggy Mountain. Sorci’s dad,
Joseph Sorci, played woodwinds in San
Francisco during the big-band era and
toured with Tommy Dorsey and Alex
Storgal, among others. Sorci moved to
Grass Valley after her mother retired
and relocated there from the Bay Area.
“We thought it would be a great place to
start a business,” she says. “She had run
a business before, so she taught me how
to run a business. … And it took on a life
of its own.” Her 2,200-square-foot build-
ing, built in 1860, previously housed
Tahoe Cafe “for way over 30 years,” she
says. “It was a labor of love to bring it