Chuck Mangione Tarantella

Chuck Mangione Tarantella

Original Release Date: 1980

Recorded Live at The Americana Hotel Ballroom, Rochester, New York, December 27, 1980

A&M SP-6513
Liner Notes

It was 3 a.m. Sunday morning, and after seven hours of music, everybody seemed a bit punchy at Chuck Mangione's all-star benefit concert at the Americana Rochester hotel for Italy's earthquake victims.

Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie had proved again that he's a force of nature, having figuratively burned down the ballroom with some big-band charts he apparently hadn't played in years.

Mangione had jumped into the audience for an old-world Italian tarantella dance with his fiancé Junie Osaki. The 20-odd piece big band assembled for the concert from around the region, which had rehearsed all afternoon, wandered off stage for a much-needed rest. Most of the 1000 or so audience members had gone home, and those that stayed, looking a bit rumpled, moved their chairs up to the front amid discarded cups and cigarette butts.

Then, Mangione and pianist Chick Corea. another modern jazz titan, sat around the grand piano and improvised on a tender ballad "My One an Only Love." Corea's tastefully ornate passagework contrasted beautifully with Mangione's longer, more lyrical lines. Visually and musically, it was one of those moments that stays like a keepsake.

The eight-hour jazz marathon featuring Steve Gadd plus other past and present Mangione colleagues finally ended up at 5:15 a.m. with about 40 people in the audience and a slap-happy Mangione disclaiming any responsibility for anything except 'the groove that's happening here'.