Chuck Mangione, the fedora-sporting flugelhorn and trumpet participant whose 1977 clean jazz hit “Feels So Good” left an indelible mark on American popular culture, has died. In a press release to the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Mangione’s household shared that he “peacefully handed away in his sleep at his residence in Rochester, New York” on Tuesday, July 22. A explanation for demise was not supplied. Mangione was 84.
Born in Rochester on November 29, 1940, Charles Frank Mangione started taking part in 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 residence. One among these musicians was Dizzy Gillespie, who gifted a teenage Mangione one among his trumpets.
As excessive schoolers, Gaspare and Chuck performed in a quintet known as the Jazz Brothers. In 1958, the youthful Mangione attended Rochester’s Eastman Faculty of Music, the place he started finding out the flugelhorn. The Jazz Brothers put out their self-titled debut album on Riverside Information imprint Jazzland in 1960, then shared two extra the next yr. After graduating, Mangione performed in Woody Herman and Maynard Ferguson’s huge band ensembles, then joined Artwork Blakely’s Jazz Messengers because of a advice from Gillespie.
By the late ’60s, Mangione had returned to Eastman as director of the varsity’s jazz ensemble. His huge 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 Information, 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 tune, “Chase the Clouds Away,” to the 1976 Summer season Olympic Video games in Montreal. Nonetheless, 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 monitor—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. Through the ’90s and 2000s, Mangione held a recurring position in Mike Choose’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: “where shopping feels so good.”)
