Chuck Mangione--Superstar With Plans

By almost any definition, Chuck Mangione qualifies as a jazz superstar.

True, his fluegelhorn and compositions are strongly pop-oriented, as is his new album, “Eyes of the Veiled Temptress” (CBS 40984), but pure jazz improvisation is never far from his heart or his horn, particularly on in-person bookings when he has a chance to stretch out.

This week, in fact, he will be devoting all his time to jazz festivals, on a country-a-day hegira: Nice today, London Monday (“We’ll be on the same bill with Dizzy Gillespie”), then the Hague, Montreux, Perugia and Andorra, backed by his six regular sidemen.

At 47, this small, trim figure from a tight-knit Rochester, N.Y., family (“My dad still sells records and T-shirts at our concerts; he’ll be 78 this month”) seems immune to the barbs of critics that began to take shape after he moved from a pure jazz background (2 1/2 years with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers) to elaborate settings and extended concert works. His career over the last 18 years has protected him with a chain-link fence of successes, gold and platinum records, Grammy awards, movie scoring commissions and symphony appearances.

True, his music has been called lightweight, too pop, too pallid, but Mangione seems genuinely unperturbed. “I’ve read all the reviews, from the ones that say you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread to the others who say they left at intermission. This kind of thing happened to Cannonball Adderley, who incidentally produced my first album in 1960; it happened to Herbie Hancock and a lot of other people.

“If I have a big record, people assume I’ve figured out a formula to be successful. The fact is, for example, when I made ‘Feels So Good’ I just wrote some music I was happy with, handed the tapes to A&M; Records and said ‘This is my next album.’ They said ‘Nice album, but we don’t hear any singles in here.’ Well, nine months later it had sold 2 million. I don’t respond to pressure from record companies or critics; my reviewers are the audiences, and besides, my only severe critic is me.”

He is, however, ambivalent about control by the record industry’s ever more powerful moguls, the producers. After switching from A&M; to CBS Records in 1982, Mangione produced the first two albums himself. “Around that time,” he said, “the bottom fell out of the record industry, sales were off, and I had a contractual deal whereby if I didn’t sell ‘X’ number of records per year, I had to work with a producer. So I’ve dealt with other producers for my last three albums.

“The numbers show that every album I ever produced has outsold anything that’s ever been produced by somebody else. But I’ve been locked in to dealing with producers, which isn’t the greatest of thrills for me.” Despite which he acknowledges: “The new album was co-produced with Thom Bell, who did a great job; moreover, this is the first album I’ve made in four years using my regular performing group.”

As so often happens with artists who are committed to sustaining vast sales, Mangione has been under pressure to duplicate the styles of earlier successes. “That’s not what I want to do; I just write whatever music I feel like writing, and that has to be my next album.”

In other words, diversification has its charms. He recently played the Universal Amphitheater with 20 strings and nine brass added. Often, he will appear with symphony orchestras too, but he has mixed feelings about this aspect of his work.

“Sometimes I may replace the regular conductor, while other orchestras refuse to let you do that; so you may have a great time or it may be like pulling teeth. Not only that--(but) you’re also part of a concert subscription series, a pop concert line-up where people have bought tickets to see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and they find they also bought Chuck Mangione, with amplification and electronic instruments. It’s really hard to grab that kind of audience, so to me it isn’t a big fun trip.”

Mangione’s ideal fun trip, the one he recalls as the most exciting among his travels, was a visit to Brazil in 1986.

“That was the most receptive of all our overseas audiences,” Mangione said. “Everybody’s a musician there--I mean, 2-year-old kids have great time and rhythm; people walk like they’re doin’ the samba. I think the fact that our music has a Latin flavor and a good rhythm thing happening made us very strong there.”

Neither “Land of Make Believe” nor any of the other perennial Mangione favorites has been covered by other artists. “I don’t understand it. People won’t do that one, or ‘Children of Sanchez’ or any of the others, because they say these are classics and they’ve been done,” he said. “I even have lyrics to ‘Chase the Clouds Away’ and it has never been recorded in the lyric version.”

Perhaps by way of compensation, he would like to produce his own Broadway show. “I won’t tell anyone what it’s about. Let’s just say I wrote the book and lyrics, and I’m determined to have it produced,” Mangione said.

“The other project I have in mind is to start a ‘Feels So Good’ community center in Rochester. I’d like to build a music room to hold a thousand, keep it available for people to stage concerts and shows, and eventually build recording and video facilities and a music school with great people who can be on the faculty and also work at my own club. So those are my two dreams--let’s hope one of them comes true soon.”