'Feels So Good' legend Chuck Mangione dies at 84

Two-time Grammy Award-winning musician Chuck Mangione, who achieved international success in 1977 with his jazz-flavored single “Feels So Good” and later became a voice actor on the animated TV comedy “King of the Hill,” has died. He was 84.

Mangione died at his home in Rochester, New York, on Tuesday in his sleep, said his attorney. The musician had been retired since 2015.

Perhaps his biggest hit — “Feels So Good” — is a staple on most smooth-jazz radio stations and has been called one of the most recognized melodies since “Michelle” by the Beatles. It hit No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and the top of the Billboard adult contemporary chart.

He followed that hit with “Give It All You Got,” commissioned for the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, and he performed it at the closing ceremony.

Mangione, a flugelhorn and trumpet player and jazz composer, released more than 30 albums during a career in which he built a sizable following after recording several albums, doing all the writing.

Mangione introduced himself to a new audience when he appeared on the first several seasons of “King of the Hill,” appearing as a commercial spokesman for Mega Lo Mart, where “shopping feels so good.”

Mangione was born on November 29, 1940, and grew up in Rochester, New York to Italian parents. His parents were jazz enthusiasts who owned a grocery store. While at elementary school, he began music lessons beginning with piano but later after watching Young Man with a Horn, switching to trumpet.[3][4] With his pianist brother, Gap, he started a band in high school and played in sessions with Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis.[4]

Mangione earned a bachelor’s degree from the Eastman School of Music — where he would eventually return as director of the school’s jazz ensemble — and left home to play with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.


(AP Photo Lucas Jackson)