Chuck Mangione obituary

Musician who helped to create ‘smooth jazz’, an easy-listening sound that won him two Grammy awards

While the arrival of rock’n’roll in the 1950s helped deflate the popularity that jazz music had once enjoyed, there would be artists who found a way to bring it back into the mainstream. One of them was Chuck Mangione, who has died aged 84.

Brought up listening to jazz greats such as Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie, he helped to create what become known as “smooth jazz”, a kind of easy-listening popular music that one might find oneself listening to in lifts or airport lounges, inflected with jazzy phrasing and deploying jazz instruments. It was Mangione’s flugelhorn that played the haunting theme of Feels So Good, his biggest hit, which reached No 4 on the US chart in 1978, but the track also featured electric and wah-wah guitars, a funky bassline and a danceable drum-beat. The track’s parent album (featuring an extended version of Feels So Good) soared to No 2 on its respective chart.