Has it been just over 20 years since Chuck Mangione’s
\nFeels So Good<\/i> first graced the musical airwaves? Long before
\nwhat is now known as “New Age Jazz” or “Smooth Jazz”, many jazz
\nartists like Mangione, Pat Metheny and David Sanborn were featuring
\njazz in a much different style as the contempary jazz artists, like
\nDuke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and even different than big-band
\njazz.<\/p>\n
When Chuck Mangione’s song “Feels So Good” hit the airwaves, it
\nwas the biggest song of its time. His instrumental tunes were
\nfeatured in the Olympics, and many radio stations (including the
\nradio studio at my high school) were using his tunes as background
\nmusic for various commericals and advertisements.<\/p>\n
In listening to his 1977 album
\nFeels So Good<\/i>, I can’t help but to listen to more of this
\nkind of music. While listening to the local Smooth Jazz Chicago
\nradio station (WNUA-FM 95.5), what makes this album (and this type
\nof music) is how they blend certain musical instruments. Two
\ninstruments in particular, one featured on Mangione’s album, is the
\nguitar (even though Mangione is famous as a trumpeter). The other
\nis keyboards and\/or synthesizers.<\/p>\n
While most people are familiar with Mangione’s title track tune,
\nits total length is clocked in close to 10 minutes long, and quite
\nfrankly, it is very different than the standard short version we
\nare all familiar with. It starts out very slow, and then kicks in
\nwith the beginning of what is known as the short version’s
\ninstrumental guitar licks. There are also different solos (both on
\nhorn and guitar) throughout. One thing in discovering long versions
\nof well-known songs is that you are just so used to the short
\nversions, it catches you off guard everytime. (Remember hearing the
\nlong version of The Doors’ “Light My Fire” for the first time?)<\/p>\n
As much as Mangione’s featured trumpet (actually it’s the
\nfluegelhorn) is heard on this album (and throughout his career),
\nhis instrumentation with the guitar is simply phenoemenal. Even the
\nsong “Maui-Waui” received some radio airplay, as I remembered
\nhearing it for this review (or did I hear it as one of those
\ncommercial backgrounds way back when?). In either case, this song
\ntoo, is just as great as the title track.<\/p>\n
“Theme From Side Street” blends horns with guitar. They relate
\nto the Spanish Horns than any particular kind. “Hide and Seek
\n(Ready Or Not Here I Come)” is very jazzy and upbeat.<\/p>\n
“Last Dance” defines the true meaning of Smooth Jazz: It’s very
\nromantic in sound, and is very relaxing. Somehow romantic tunes
\nlike these can only be focused on the horn as the main key
\ninstrument. Even the brisk guitar touches are simply
\nmagnificent.<\/p>\n
“The XIth Commandment” (that’s the number 11 for those who don’t
\nknow) is very Olympic sounding. Yet it is moody, it changes tempo
\ntowards the end, and is a song that sets the pace for the Olympic
\nGames (which a lot of his music was featured, in later years).<\/p>\n
The title says it all:
\nFeels So Good<\/i> is how “you” will feel after listening to this
\nalbum. Mostly all of the songs are quite long (the average is over
\neight minutes, the shortest just over two), but somehow I still
\nwant to hear more. And it also makes me want to explore other
\nsmooth jazz artists and their styles. What I didn’t know was that
\nthis kind of jazz was around since the late 1970s. This type of
\nmusic became more popular towards the end of the 1980s. Jazz wasn’t
\nas popular as rock and\/or pop music, until it became recognized,
\nalso in the late Eighties. This music is very well accepted today,
\nfrom its jazzy upbeat tunes like “Hide and Seek”, to the smooth
\narrangements in songs like “Feels So Good” and “Last Dance”, jazz
\nhas created another Chapter in the book of popular music, right
\nnext to Rock ‘n’ Roll, Country, Pop, Alertnative, and far more
\ncategories of music. And that Chapter is “Smooth Jazz”.<\/p>\n
Somewhere, on one of those many “Smooth Jazz” radio stations,
\nChuck Mangione’s music is playing. We haven’t heard much of him in
\nthe main spotlight of popular music recently, because obviously,
\ntoday’s popular music is now being dominated by hip-hop, rap and
\nalternative. But somewhere in the jazz section, many people are
\ndiscovering or re-discovering Mangione’s music.
\nFeels So Good<\/i> put him on the map as a promising jazz artist,
\nand opened the doors, like his fellow counterparts, to explore the
\nmusic of jazz into it’s next featured category: New Age Jazz.
\nExplore for yourself — It’s great to listen to, it’s relaxing and
\nromantic. New Age \/ Smooth Jazz is in, and will be here for a long
\ntime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":27324,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7260],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-38689","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-chuck-mangione","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38689"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}