‘Feels So Good’ jazz musician dies at 84

Chuck Mangione, a prolific composer and musician who released 30 albums in his career, died July 22, a statement from his family confirmed. He was 84.

“The family of Chuck Mangione is deeply saddened to share that Chuck peacefully passed away in his sleep at his home in Rochester, New York, on July 22, 2025,” said the statement, shared July 24 with the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle, part of the USA TODAY Network.

A celebrated composer and virtuoso flugelhorn and trumpet player, Mangione began taking music lessons at age 8 and played in a jazz combo with his pianist brother, Gap, during his high school years.

He and Gap were both heavily inspired by Dizzy Gillespie, a family friend and jazz great, whom their father adored. Gillespie would join the Mangiones for dinner whenever he was in town and became one of Mangione’s biggest influences.

Gillespie was so impressed by teenage Mangione’s musical prowess that he gave him one of his trademark upswept trumpets.

Mangione went on to study at the Eastman School of Music and graduated in 1963 with a bachelor’s degree in music education. He later returned to teach and direct the school’s jazz ensemble.

He parlayed his musical upbringing into a successful solo career, selling millions of records and receiving numerous awards, including two Grammys: in 1977 for best instrumental composition (“Bellavia”) and in 1979 for best pop instrumental performance (“The Children of Sanchez”). The latter, a soundtrack for the movie of the same name, also won a Golden Globe.

His 1977 single “Feels So Good,” off an album of the same name, reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The album peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard albums chart in 1978, bested only by the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack.

“Feels So Good” also became a bit on TV’s animated “King of the Hill,” where it was frequently referenced, with Mangione himself nabbing a recurring voice-acting role.

Mangione also composed “Give it All You Got,” the theme song for the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, and performed it during the closing ceremonies to an audience of several hundred million viewers.

“Chuck’s love affair with music has been characterized by his boundless energy, unabashed enthusiasm, and pure joy that radiated from the stage,” his family’s statement reads. “His appreciation for his loyal worldwide fans was genuine as evidenced by how often he would sit at the edge of the stage after a concert for however long it took to sign autographs for the fans who stayed to meet him and the band.”

The family also noted that he worked to inspire a new generation of musicians by using high school bands as his orchestra or scheduling children’s matinee concerts where kids in the audience would be invited to bring their instruments and join him onstage.

Even before his death, Mangione’s wide-ranging music career was memorialized in the American songbook. In 2009, he donated a selection of his music memorabilia to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Among the items: his signature brown felt hat, scores to his most important works, photos, albums and even an animation cell from “King of The Hill.”