Chuck Mangione, the virtuoso jazz flugelhorn player, trumpeter and composer who had a left-field Top 5 pop hit with “Feels So Good” in 1978 and released some 30 albums during his career, died Tuesday in Rochester, NY. He was 84.
Mangione’s family told his hometown newspaper Rochester Democrat and Chronicle that the musician died at home in his sleep.
Mangione had been composing and releasing jazz albums for nearly a decade when he signed with Mercury Records in the late 1960s. He made five LPs of instrumentals, most recorded in concert, for the label from 1970-73, and four of those hit the lower reaches of the Billboard 200 chart. Three singles from the era also dented the Hot 100.
He then signed with A&M Records — the artist-friendly label launched by jazz trumpeter Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss — and released Chase the Clouds Away (1975), which made the Top 50 and went gold. He put out a few more LPs for A&M before hitting the big time in early 1978.
RELATED: Jerry Moss Dies: A&M Records Co-Founder Was 88
“Feels So Good,” the eminently hummable title track from the all-instrumental album released in December 1977, began getting mainstream AM radio airplay. Featuring Mangione’s flugelhorn virtuosity, it climbed the Hot 100 all the way to No. 4. The hit also fueled the Feels So Good LP — whose cover showed the beaming musician embracing his flugelhorn — all soar all the way to No. 2 on the Billboard 200. It was two weeks in the pole position, denied the crown by the juggernaut Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.
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