Charles Frank “Chuck” Mangione passed away on July 2, 2025 in Rochester, NY, the same city he was born in back on November 29, 1940. He showed an early interest in music and his music loving parents, Frank and Nancy Mangione, enrolled him in music school at the age of eight. He first studied piano but took up the trumpet after seeing Kirk Douglas in “Young Man with a Horn.” He would later make us aware that a flugelhorn really was a thing.
His brother Gaspare, better known as Gap, was a budding pianist and the two formed a combo called the Jazz Brothers while they were still students in Rochester’s Franklin High School. Their father would take them to see jazz luminaries such as Miles Davis, Art Blakey and Dizzy Gillespie at the Ridgecrest Inn.
“My father would walk up to someone like Dizzy and say: ‘Hi, Mr. Gillespie. These are my two sons and they can play.’ And we would sit in,” Chuck Mangione recalled in a 1999 interview with JazzTimes magazine. Jazz luminaries from Carmen McRae to Sarah Vaughan, Art Blakey, and Kai Winding would visit the Mangione home. Dizzy Gillespie became Chuck’s musical father and gifted him one of his trademark upswept trumpets.
Chuck studied at the Eastman School of Music graduating in 1963. He would later return to teach and conduct the Eastman Jazz Ensemble. After graduating, he played with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and various other ensembles. His notable recordings include “Chase The Clouds Away” (used in coverage of the 1976 Summer Olympics), “Bellavia” (which was his mother’s maiden name), and “Give It All You Got” (used in coverage of the 1980 Winter Olympics).
But it was the 1977 recording of “Feels So Good” that rocketed Chuck Mangione into the rarefied air of musical stardom. There would be other certified gold albums such as Children of Sanchez and Fun And Games and there would be 13 Grammy nominations, including 2 Grammy wins. Yet, if he were remembered only for “Feels So Good” that would be appropriate because that is how his music made people feel.
“He could make you feel so happy no matter what you were going through,” one fan recently told me. “I never met anyone who didn’t enjoy listening to him. He just relaxed you.”
Another fan recalled working as part of a stage crew many years ago in Buffalo and meeting him after a concert. Once Chuck finished signing autographs for fans he stopped to talk to the cleanup crew. “He sat down on the stage and talked with us for maybe a half hour. He was just a regular guy.”
In 2009, Chuck signed over a cache of music memorabilia to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, including his signature brown felt hat. Later generations may remember him as playing a caricature of himself on King of the Hill, urging people to come on down to MegaLo Mart where “shopping feels so good.”
Some may wonder how Chuck Mangione and his instrumentals could rise to worldwide fame at a time when instrumentals were not in vogue. Perhaps he summed it up best himself in his online entry on the Rochester Music Hall Of Fame website, where he is a 2012 inductee.
His entry online there quotes him as saying, “If you’re honest and play with love, people will sit down and listen… my music is the sum of all I have experienced.”
Chuck Mangione made it feel so good, whether you were tuning in to the ‘76 Olympics or shopping at MegaLo Mart. From Eastman to the world stage, the flugelhorn legend from Rochester played with heart, humor, and that unmistakable hat. We remember him not just for the notes, but for the joy behind them.
