Chuck Mangione, smooth jazz maestro behind ‘Feels So Good,' dies at 84

India Today

25-07-2025

Chuck Mangione, the Grammy-winning flugelhorn player and jazz composer whose 1977 instrumental hit 'Feels So Good' became a defining anthem of smooth jazz, has died at 84.Mangione died peacefully in his sleep at his home in Rochester, New York, on Tuesday, his attorney Peter S. Matorin said. The musician had been retired since 2015.With his signature felt hat, warm horn tones, and a knack for melodies that crossed jazz into pop, Mangione was one of the most recognisable figures in instrumental music. His chart-topping 'Feels So Good' hit No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the adult contemporary chart, becoming what some radio hosts have called one of the most instantly recognized melodies of its time.advertisement
'It identified for a lot of people a song with an artist,' Mangione once told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, adding, 'That song just topped out there and took it to a whole other level.'The Rochester-born musician released more than 30 albums in a prolific career that spanned decades. He earned his first Grammy Award for Bellavia, named after his mother, and a second for the score to The Children of Sanchez, which also earned a Golden Globe nomination.A versatile performer, Mangione wrote and performed 'Give It All You Got' for the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, later playing the piece live at the closing ceremony — another high note in a career filled with them.'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,' Mangione once said, describing his early influences like Dizzy Gillespie.Born into a musical family, Mangione began his career performing bebop with his brother Gap in The Jazz Brothers. After earning a degree from the Eastman School of Music — where he later served as director of the jazz ensemble — he went on to play with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers before forging a solo career.Mangione also charmed younger audiences in the 1990s and early 2000s through his recurring animated role on Fox's King of the Hill, where he played a fictional version of himself as the jingle-happy pitchman for Mega Lo Mart.'Shopping feels so good,' his cartoon alter ego cheerfully declared — a tongue-in-cheek nod to his biggest hit.In 2009, Mangione donated his iconic felt hat, the Feels So Good score, and other memorabilia to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, preserving his legacy in American music history.- EndsWith inputs from Associated Press