Music and more with claudecat17 (aka Chris Davlin)!

Here we have the very famous in the 70’s but very young here Chuck Mangione, on regular trumpet, pre-flugelhorn but with the Dizzy-like cheek puffing thing, with his brother Gap on the Fender Rhodes piano, Gary Niewood on sax, that’s the legendary Vinny Ruggerio on drums, and Tony Levin, a guy with a future as big as his mustache, on bass. Gap’s got a festive ‘stache goin’ too, with full mutton-chop regalia, almost like the old football face guards. It sure looks fun!

Seriously though, these motherfuckers could fucking PLAY!!!! The records are even better. I just captured the entire Riverside Records catalog, almost all high quality jazz albums by major jazz cats, but there are also lots of no name acts like these guys, who were billed as the “Jazz Brothers” or that with Sextet added. Those records are insanely great! I knew ol’ Chuck had a past as a serious jazz guy but this is beyond my wildest expectations! The whole sextet is made up of monster players, and the tunes and arrangements are top notch too.

Chuck got his break playing in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and from there just kept making good shit, until things got so bad that he had to do garbage like “Feels So Good” and whatever other gigantic chart-toppers he had back in the bad half of the 70s. The disco half. The Foreigner half. Incidentally their lead singer is also a Rochesterian, Lou Grammatico. He was in a band called Black Sheep before the big time came calling, with a bass player who was great. Billy Sheehan maybe? I never knew ’em, before my time, but you’d see a lot of his type. It’s a very Italian place, Rochester.

But Chuck! And Gap, who has employed my best buddy Mike Plouffe for decades now, even through a bad accident that caused him to miss years. Gap and Chuck have allowed Mike to meet and play with many world class musicians, including his idol as a kid, now just a friend and fellow drummer, session drummer extraordinaire Steve Gadd, who helped him rehab after nearly losing his foot. Mike’s been on the Letterman show because of the young fellas you see here earnestly playing the shit out of the tune at hand. The stories he has! Siblings… Italian siblings…

I simply had no idea that these guys were THIS good. I played their Riverside albums all afternoon recently and there wasn’t a bad moment. I will admit that it gets a little same-y after a while. They’re not being adventurous or trying anything new, it’s just really excellent straight ahead jazz, as played in 1960-61. Great soloists, and the rhythm section is also fantastic always, with the guys mentioned and others, including Gadd, who kinda got his start with the Mangione brothers too. I’m so happy I know about this stuff now! I wonder if Mike’s even heard it? I’ll know soon!

Anyway, let’s not palaver no more, rather, get to gettin’, as they used to say right before they put it to bed. Here it is friends, some very intensely serious jazz musicians from my adopted home, good ol’ Rochester, NY.