On Tuesday (7.22,) Chuck Mangione, the two-time Grammy Award-winning musician passed away. He was 84.
Recognizing international success in 1977 with his jazz-flavored single ‘Feels So Good,’ Mangione died in his sleep at his home in Rochester, New York, according to his attorney, Peter S. Matorin of Beldock Levine & Hoffman LLP.
Retired since 2015, ‘Feels So Good’ became a smooth-jazz radio standard securing the #4 slot on the Billboard Hot 100 and #1 on Billboard’s adult contemporary list.
In a 2008 interview, the American-born musician said “It identified for a lot of people a song with an artist, even though I had a pretty strong base audience that kept us out there touring as often as we wanted to, that song just topped out there and took it to a whole other level.”
Commissioned for the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, Chuck performed his classic during the closing ceremony, and he followed that hit with “Give It All You Got.”
Starting his career as a bebop jazz musician heavily inspired by Dizzy Gillespie, Chuck was the brother of jazz pianist Gap Mangione, with whom he partnered in The Jazz Brothers.
“He also was one of the first musicians I saw who had a rapport with the audience by just telling the audience what he was going to play and who was in his band,” said Mangione in an interview with the Post-Gazette.
The legendary, multi-talented artist earned a bachelor’s degree from the Eastman School of Music – where he would eventually return as director of the school’s jazz ensemble – and left home to play with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.
A flugelhorn and trumpet player and jazz composer by trade, Mangione released more than thirty LPs. He was awarded his first Grammy in 1977 for his “Bellavia,” album which was named after his mother. The “Friends and Love,” full length was also Grammy-nominated, and he earned a best original score Golden Globe nomination and a second Grammy for the movie “The Children of Sanchez.”
Appearing on the first several seasons of “King of the Hill,” as a commercial spokesman for Mega Lo Mart, where “shopping feels so good,” the Mangione introduced himself to a new audience.
In 2009, Chuck Mangione donated his signature brown felt hat and the score of his Grammy-winning single “Feels So Good,” along with albums, songbooks and other ephemera from his long and illustrious career to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
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Author: Al Denté
Photo: Marek Lazarski