Chuck Mangione, a jazz legend and Grammy-winning flugelhorn musician whose mellow tunes shaped a generation, passed away last week at the age of 84. According to a local funeral parlor, he died quietly in his sleep on Tuesday at his Rochester, New York, home.
Over the course of his five-decade career and more than thirty recordings, Mangione gained both a loyal following and critical acclaim for his distinctive fusion of jazz, pop, and classical elements. His 1977 crossover song “Feels So Good,” which peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and is still a mainstay of smooth jazz radio, is what made him most famous.
In a statement to the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, Chuck’s family said that his boundless energy, contagious excitement, and the joy he gave to every performance characterized his love affair with music. Mangione frequently sat at the edge of the stage to greet and sign autographs with fans after performances, a custom that demonstrated his profound gratitude for his audience.
He was raised in a jazz-heavy home after being born Charles Frank Mangione in Rochester in 1940. Dizzy Gillespie, a family friend who was so taken by young Mangione’s talent that he gave him one of his famous upswept trumpets, was among the greats of the 1950s whom his father introduced him to.
At the age of eight, Mangione started performing music and soon became a flugelhorn and trumpet virtuoso. After completing formal music studies, he went on to write pieces that were performed all over the world. While “Give It All You Got” served as the theme for the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, “Chase the Clouds Away” was featured at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal.
Out of 14 Grammy nominations, he took home two of them. He won Best Instrumental Composition for Bellavia, which was named after his mother, in 1977. Two years later, he received a Golden Globe Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance for the soundtrack to the movie of the same name, The Children of Sanchez.
Mangione saw a rise in popularity due to mainstream culture in the late 1990s. As a celebrity advocate for the fictional Mega Lo Mart chain, he portrayed a cartoon version of himself in the popular animated series King of the Hill. His tagline was “Shopping feels so good.” Additionally, he wrote the music for the Valentine’s Day episode of the show in 1998.
The delight Chuck Mangione offered to audiences all throughout the world and the warm, melodious melodies that characterized his music are what will live on in his legacy.
