Chuck Mangione

As a fixture of the US smooth jazz scene for over 50 years, horn player Chuck Mangione's easy going, melodic, bebop instrumentals won Grammy Awards, sold millions of records and even soundtracked the Winter Olympics. Born Charle Frank Mangione in Rochester, New York in November 20, 1940, to an Italian-American family of music lovers, Mangione and his brother Gap were regularly taken to gigs by their father, and stars such as Dizzy Gillespie and Art Blakey became family friends who occasionally turned up for dinner. The siblings studied at the Eastman School of Music and played together in a quintet called Jazz Brothers in the late 1950s, before Chuck went on to perform with big bands and join Blakey's Jazz Messengers in 1965 on trumpet. Signing his first major label deal with Mercury, the flugelhorn became his instrument of choice and his fluent, dreamy signature sound developed on his popular early albums Friends and Love and Land of Make Believe. He won his first Grammy Award in 1977 for his composition "Bellavia", but it was his 1978 hit "Feels So Good" that really put him on the map, and during a time when the Bee Gees were dominating the airwaves with their landmark disco album Saturday Night Fever, Mangione's gentle, infectious instrumental offered a light, melodic contrast and shot to number four in the US charts. He went on to record a live album at the Hollywood Bowl and win another Grammy for his Children of Sanchez soundtrack album, composed for the film of the same name, before "Give It All You Got" became the official theme tune of the 1980 Olympics held in Lake Placid, New York and made the US top 20 after Mangione performed at the closing ceremony. His profile dwindled in the late-1980s, but he returned to music after the death of his mentor Dizzy Gillespie and began appearing as a caricature of himself in the animated television series King of the Hill in 1997, before releasing the album The Feeling's Back two years later. He followed with Everything for Love (2000), and played for a charity concert at Rochester's Eastman Theatre for his 60th birthday. Retired in 2015 after the death of his wife, Chuck Mangione died at his Rochester home on July 22, 2025, at the age of 84.