Flugelhornist and composer Chuck Mangione and I are separated by about three degrees. He and my high school band director, jazz drummer and band leader Clem deRosa, played together back when. I was in chorus, not band, but I had friends who were. So that’s about three degrees, unless you count the time Mr D and pianist Marian McPartland played at our elementary school — 2.5 degrees?
Anyway, Mangione is a fellow New York native, though he hails from upstate. I started to listen to him while still in high school, and I still like his music. A master of catchy melodies, Mangione does not get a lot of respect from some jazz aficionados, who believe jazz has to be unmelodic to be true to the genre. Yeah, sure. Some of Mangione’s best pieces end up on “smooth jazz” radio, and he has written some good stuff for the movies, the Olympics, and orchestras. And as he approaches age 70, he still has a huge fan base.
This album includes some of Mangione’s orchestral and choral works, as well as some more personal compositions. The musicians include his quartet (Gerry Niewood, Al Johnson and Joe LaBarbera), the elusive singer Esther Satterfield, cellist Cathie Lehr, the Horseheads Chamber Singers, and the Hamilton (Ontario) Philharmonic Orchestra, all recorded at Massey Hall in Toronto. It was a top seller in 1973, as it seemed to be harbinger of a union between jazz and “serious” music. Unfortunately, Mangione was not able to repeat the magic.
All of the tracks are Mangione compositions. Track 1 on the A side — “Legend of the One-Eyed Sailor” (I’m not sure if there’s a double entendre there) — features Mangione’s limpid flugelhorn playing, backed by the orchestra. Almost ballad-like in feel, it starts with a martial drum solo, an orchestral swell and Mangione’s horn solo. The next, sung by Satterfield, is “Lullaby for Nancy Carol,” a sweet, sentimental song for a sleepy little girl. Lehr plays a haunting cello line in “El Gato Triste,” a Mangione standard. Closing out the A-side is “The Gloria from the Mass of St Bernard,” a work that frankly I have never been able to appreciate.
The B-side has two beautiful tunes featuring Satterfield on vocals: a love song, “As Long as We’re Together,” perhaps a prelude to Mangione’s widely popular “Feels So Good,” and the title cut, an expansive tribute to the human imagination, “Land of Make Believe.” It’s the last that makes the album for me. I could listen to it over and over and still not get tired of it, despite its 12-minute length. The lyrics are little sappy, full of that innocent optimism that characterized the mid-1970s, but Satterfield’s vocals and LaBarbera’s drum work make it an enduring piece.
This album is on CD.
I haven’t picked up Land of Make Believe yet. I have two Esther Satterfield albums The Need to Be and Once I Loved.
I love Esther Satterfield’s voice. Nobody knows why she left the music industry. If she were to resurface with her beautiful voice, she would be a hit on the jazz tour circuit.