Although he’s best known for his monster hit, “Feels So Good”, the title track of his 1977 A&M album, Chuck Mangione got his professional start with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.
Mangione, who died July 22, 2025, in Rochester, NY, at the age of 84, was part of a Blakey band that also included Keith Jarrett on piano, Frank Mitchell on tenor saxophone, and Reggie Workman on bass. Writing about Blakey’s 1966 Limelight album, Buttercorn Lady, Scott Yanow of AllMusic pointed out that, “Few jazz followers would think of trumpeter Chuck Mangione and pianist Keith Jarrett as former members of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, but, in 1966, they both worked in the drummer’s classic hard bop unit, and the stint gave them needed exposure and helped the pair to develop their own individual voices.”
Adopting the flugelhorn as his main instrument, Mangione went on to become a huge pop star. He received 14 Grammy Award nominations, winning twice: Best Instrumental Composition, “Bellavia” in 1976; and Best Pop Instrumental Performance for the title track from his film score for The Children of Sanchez.
Growing up in Rochester, Mangione saw the movie, Young Man With a Horn, when he was 10 and that motivated him to become a trumpet player. His father often took him and his piano-playing brother Gaspare (later know as Gap) to the Ridgecrest Inn, a local club where they saw such jazz giants as Dizzy Gillespie, Blakey, and Miles Davis.
In a June 1999 interview with JazzTimes’ Patricia Myers, Mangione recalled that, “When my father took us to nightclubs, he would walk up to someone like Dizzy and say, ‘Hi, Mr. Gillespie. There are my two sons, and they can play.’ And, we would sit in.”
As a result, Gillespie became a friend and mentor. “He was a brilliant player,” Mangione told Myers, “and created a unique kind of music. And, he was never afraid to let the audience know he was having a good time. Dizzy taught me that if you want to just play whatever you want to play without considering the audience, fine. But if you want to get paid, you’re now in a different ballgame.”
The brothers formed a quintet in high school, and Chuck went on to the Eastman School of Music, graduating in 1963 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Music. While there, he made the transition from trumpet to flugelhorn. The brothers also started recording for Riverside Records and released their first album, The Jazz Brothers, in 1960. The album was reissued in 1998. In addition to Chuck and Gap, the sextet included tenor saxophonist Sal Nistico, drummer Roy McCurdy, alto saxophonist Larry Combs and bassist Bill Saunders. According to AllMusic‘s Yanow, Mangione, at the time, was considered “a Dizzy Gillespie-inspired bebop trumpeter. The sextet performs ‘Secret Love’, ‘Girl of My Dreams’ and five straight-ahead group originals with spirit and swing.”
After leaving the Jazz Messengers, Mangione formed a quartet that included saxophonist/flutist Gerry Niewood. In 1973, he released Land of Make Believe, an orchestral suite, for Mercury Records. The title track was sung by Esther Satterfield, and the orchestra also included trumpeter Jon Faddis and drummers Joe LaBarbera and Steve Gadd. It received lots of airplay on FM rock radio stations, and, as a result, Mangione was signed by Herb Alpert’s A&M Records, the label for such hit albums as Feels So Good and Chase the Clouds Away.
Somewhat overwhelmed by his own popularity, Mangione took a four-year sabbatical from performing and recording in1989. “It was like a merry-go-round,” he said. “Somebody would hand me a schedule, and I’d get on a plane, go to a hotel, and order room service. It was time to recharge my batteries.”
The sabbatical ended after Gillespie died in 1993. “Just before Dizzy died,” Mangione said, “he told me, ‘Next year, you and I are going to be back.’ I went back to playing concerts and clubs in 1994.” According to The New York Times’ Barry Singer, writing two days after Mangione’s death, “The subsequent years brought reunion tours and performances, large and small, but nothing approaching his 1970s success. His return included a reticence that resulted in only a handful of new releases.”
In February 1990, Mangione lost two sidemen, Niewood, and guitarist Coleman Mellett in a plane crash near Buffalo. Their deaths, Singer wrote, “haunted him.”
Survivors include his daughters, Nancy Piraino and Diana Smith; a sister, Josephine Shank; his brother, Gap; three grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. His wife, Rosemarie, died in 2015.