As the World Series plays out this week, the man who gave the world Feels So Good will be batting cleanup for the Columbus Jazz Orchestra. "As a kid, I was in love with music and baseball," Chuck Mangione said last week by phone. "I wanted to be the center fielder for the New York Yankees during the day, and I wanted to play with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers at night.
I guess I realized when I was still 90 pounds as a junior in high school I was no threat to Mickey Mantle." Yet Mangione did become a member of the Jazz Messengers, a group known for its trumpet players. "I was very fortunate that when Freddie Hubbard left Art Blakey, Art called Dizzy (Gillespie) for a recommendation, and Dizzy said, ?
Do you remember the kid from Rochester, N.Y.?
? And that was how I got into that gig." Mangione, 65, calls Gillespie his "musical father.
" He praises Gillespie?s role in creating and popularizing bebop. "By doing that, he was having people listen to the most complicated music ever happening ?
and enjoying it." But another trumpeter ? Miles Davis ?
is the one who inspired Mangione to choose the fluegelhorn. Mangione wanted to play the different-sounding horn he heard Davis play on the albums Porgy Bess and Sketches of Spain. "I didn?
t even know what one looked like, but I went to a music store and got one," Mangione said. He was immediately taken with the instrument?s rich, full sound.
"It has a more mellow, warmer sound, I would say, than the trumpet. When I first played one, it was like finding the right baseball glove or something." The fluegelhorn powered the hit Feels So Good, which reached No.
4 on the pop charts in 1978. "What happened was somebody edited the nine-minute album version down to 3:27, and the Bee Gees had completely saturated radio at the time . .
. (with) their Saturday Night Fever record, and I guess program directors were looking for something they could stick in between those songs," Mangione said with a laugh. "They started playing it, and it was a platinum album.
" Byron Stripling, Columbus Jazz Orchestra artistic director, remembers hearing the hit. "You know how when you?re a kid .
. . you learn tunes off of records, and you copy other people?
And so I learned Feels So Good; I learned Chuck?s solo," Stripling said. The song has become a staple of smooth-jazz radio.
"I?m very thrilled that I have one of those songs that people can say, ?That?
s Chuck Mangione music,? " Mangione said. But, Stripling said, Mangione?
s music is more than catchy riffs. "(His) music makes you feel good, but it?s also great creative music, with improvisation and all the things that jazz has," Stripling said.
"Chuck is not only a great writer and fluegelhorn player, but he?s also very inspirational as a leader. "I?
ve seen him do this, literally pulling the music out of the musicians, and have them play with an intensity that you probably haven?t heard from the Columbus Jazz Orchestra before." Mangione said he?
ll play during the second half of the concerts ? but he wouldn?t give away the playlist.
"I?m sure we can?t get out of town without playing Feels So Good, and perhaps we?
ll hear Children of Sanchez, but the rest we?ll leave for a surprise.
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