Mangione considers himself a Gillespie disciple

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To much of the public, Chuck Mangione may be a pop star who made a name for himself with a couple of AM radio hits nearly three decades ago, playing an exotic instrument.But at his core, Mangione has always considered himself a disciple of "Dizzy" Gillespie.That influence even extends to Mangione's stage presentation - in addition to Gillespie's playing, arranging and conducting. "He also was one of the first musicians I saw who had a rapport with the audience by just telling the audience what he was going to play and who was in his band," said Mangione.A native of Rochester, N.Y., Mangione had numerous opportunities to hang with a founding father of the bebop movement.When he and older brother Gaspare, a keyboard player nicknamed "Gap" who still performs in the Rochester area, were children and decided to become musicians, their father Frank, who ran a grocery store, would take his sons to places where nationally known musicians were playing and announced to them that his sons could play.And that put some pressure on both boys to step up - "When you get up to the bandstand you better be able to play," Mangione says.Gillespie later become one of the numerous jazz legends who supped at the Mangione home whenever he came to Rochester and even gave the budding trumpeter one of his trademark horns with the bell bent upward .However, it wasn't until college that Mangione found what he considers his true voice."When I was at the Eastman School of Music as an undergraduate student, jazz at that time was not a style of music that the school taught or was in favor of," Mangione says. "Those of us who were into jazz would get together on Saturday afternoons; people who were into arranging would transcribe music that was happening at the time and would put together an ensemble (to play it)" - such as "Sketches of Spain" and "Porgy and Bess," which of course were collaborations between trumpeter Miles Davis and arranger Gil Evans."Miles was playing a flugelhorn (on those dates), and I wanted to play those parts and I went and got a flugelhorn; I fell in love with the sound and the feel," but because it isn't an instrument in much demand. "I waited until I put my own group together" in the late 1960s to play it full time.By the late 1970s Mangione had already built a sizable following after recording several albums with both a small group and symphonic-type orchestras, for which he did all the writing. Most notable was 1970's Grammy-nominated "Friends and Love," which he recorded with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra.However, "'Feels So Good' really introduced the music to a whole lot of people all over the world," Mangione says. "It identified for a lot of people a song with an artist, even though I had a pretty strong base audience that kept us out there touring as often as we wanted to, that song just topped out there and took it to a whole other level."He followed that up with "Give It All You Got," commissioned for the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, and performed it at the Closing Ceremony."You kind of develop a special respect for the athletes because they work and work and work and they get to go out there one time and give it all they got, but they don't get a second chance," Mangione says. Of course, "we didn't get a second chance to play it."But in the late 1980s, Mangione took a break."I had been on the road for 20 consecutive years and doing probably nine months of public appearances and an album a year," Mangione says. "My battery needed recharged, so I just stopped for a while."During his time away from the scene, "I basically tried to get stronger mentally and physically and figure out what it was like to not have someone hand you an itinerary that told what time you ate breakfast and what time you went to a sound check."Though he had no intention of retiring, he decided to return after meeting with Gillespie, "who at the time was in pretty bad health. He said, 'Chuck, this time next year me and you will be out there.'" Gillespie, however, died in 1993, and the next year he returned to performing.The music business has changed, he admits ."Along the way, when I was building my career and leading up to 'Feels So Good,' you had deejays with different personalities. They had the freedom to play whatever they wanted. I don't know who gets to be heard on the radio these days."In addition of occasional touring with his small group - he played at the Cotton Club in Tokyo last week - Mangione is looking forward to what amounts to a "family reunion" in November, an upcoming gig with the Syracuse Symphony - including brother Gap."My mother's in a nursing home, and we get together and honk for her up there."E-mail Rick Nowlin at rnowlin(at)post-gazette.com. (Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)