Chuck Mangione, the fedora-sporting flugelhorn and trumpet participant whose 1977 easy jazz hit “Feels So Good” left an indelible mark on American popular culture, has died. In an announcement to the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Mangione’s household shared that he “peacefully handed away in his sleep at his dwelling in Rochester, New York” on Tuesday, July 22. A reason for dying was not supplied. Mangione was 84.
Born in Rochester on November 29, 1940, Charles Frank Mangione started enjoying piano at age eight, although he quickly switched to the trumpet after seeing the Kirk Douglas movie “Younger Man With a Horn.” His older brother, Gaspare, was himself a pianist, and their father would ceaselessly take each boys to see jazz reveals on the native Ridgecrest Inn, after which he’d invite the performers to have dinner on the household’s dwelling. One in every of these musicians was Dizzy Gillespie, who gifted a teenage Mangione one among his trumpets.
As excessive schoolers, Gaspare and Chuck performed in a quintet referred to as the Jazz Brothers. In 1958, the youthful Mangione attended Rochester’s Eastman College of Music, the place he started learning the flugelhorn. The Jazz Brothers put out their self-titled debut album on Riverside Data imprint Jazzland in 1960, then shared two extra the next yr. After graduating, Mangione performed in Woody Herman and Maynard Ferguson’s massive band ensembles, then joined Artwork Blakely’s Jazz Messengers because of a suggestion from Gillespie.
By the late ’60s, Mangione had returned to Eastman as director of the college’s jazz ensemble. His massive break as a solo artist arrived by way of a 1970 efficiency of his authentic materials alongside the Rochester Philharmonic, which was recorded and privately launched as Pals & Love…A Chuck Mangione Live performance. The album received Mangione signed to Mercury Data, and yielded his first Grammy nomination—of an eventual 14—for “Hill The place the Lord Hides.”
Mangione graduated from Mercury to A&M in 1975. Shortly thereafter, he received a Grammy Award—Finest Instrumental Composition for “Bellavia,” a tribute to his mom—and contributed a track, “Chase the Clouds Away,” to the 1976 Summer season Olympic Video games in Montreal. Nevertheless, it was Mangione’s 1977 LP Feels So Good that cemented his legacy. The album went double platinum and hit No. 2 on the Billboard albums chart, whereas a radio edit of its title observe—the unique clocks in at 9:31—peaked at No. 4 on the Sizzling 100.
“Feels So Good” has since appeared on the soundtracks to Fargo, Zombieland, and Physician Unusual. In the course of the ’90s and 2000s, Mangione held a recurring position in Mike Decide’s beloved animated sitcom King of the Hill, the place he performed himself as a spokesman for the fictional grocery store chain Mega Lo Mart. (The shop’s slogan: “the place buying feels so good.”)
