He Was So Good He Helped Spawn a New Music Genre

Another big name in music is gone this week: Jazz great Chuck Mangione has died at age 84, reports the Democrat and Chronicle of Mangione's hometown in Rochester, New York.

• "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," his family wrote in a statement.
• Mangione's "Feels So Good" in the 1970s was "one of the biggest pop-jazz instrumental crossover hits of all time," per Variety. It reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

• Mangione was nominated for 14 Grammys and won twice, both in the 1970s.
• His "limpid fluegelhorn ruled the upper reaches of Billboard's adult contemporary charts in the 1970s and '80s with a culture-permeating lilt that helped create the genre known as 'smooth jazz,'" per the New York Times.
• Read the Democrat and Chronicle story by Marcia Greenwood for more details on Mangione's youth: "He grew up in a musical household where his father exposed him and his brother Gap to jazz greats of the 1950s, including Dizzy Gillespie, a family friend."