In 1978 a jazz instrumental played on a flugelhorn reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100. “Feels So Good” made Chuck Mangione one of the best-known jazz musicians in America, and its melody has been played on radio, in shopping centres and at sports events ever since. Mangione died in his sleep at his home in Rochester, New York, on July 22, 2025, his family said. He was 84.
Rochester and the Jazz Messengers
Mangione was born in Rochester in 1940 into an Italian American family that loved jazz; his father took him and his brother Gap to clubs and invited visiting musicians home for dinner. He studied at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester and in the 1960s played trumpet with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, one of the great training grounds of modern jazz. He later switched to the softer, rounder flugelhorn, which became his trademark, along with his felt hat.
Feels So Good
In the 1970s Mangione led his own groups and recorded with orchestras. He won Grammys for Bellavia in 1977 and for his soundtrack to the film The Children of Sanchez in 1979. “Feels So Good”, from the 1977 album of the same name, crossed over to pop radio and sold millions. In 1980 he performed his song “Give It All You Got”, written for the event, at the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid.
King of the Hill
In the late 1990s and 2000s Mangione voiced himself as a recurring character in the animated comedy King of the Hill, as a spokesman for the fictional Mega Lo Mart, which introduced him to a younger audience. He had largely stopped performing by then.
Mangione made jazz that people who said they did not like jazz could hum, and “Feels So Good” is still one of the few jazz instrumentals most Americans can recognise from its first few notes.