King of the Hill is a repository of weird jokes, and as it happens a number of those jokes involve real-life musicians. The most prominent is Lucky, Luanne's husband memorably played by Tom Petty. Another is Hank's "Cousin Dusty" who turns out to be bassist Dusty Hill of ZZ Top.
The show's best musician-based gag, however, was also among the weirdest. In fact, it worked so well that to this day fans have a hard time believing that a real-life person stood at the center of it all. Chuck Mangione, who serves as the spokesperson for the show's fictional chain store Mega Lo Mart, is a legendary jazz performer. But the details of his singular career are sufficiently offbeat for King of the Hill to take brilliant advantage of. The result is a real-life cameo of a figure who sounds thoroughly made-up.
Chuck Mangione Is an Influential Jazz Musician
Mangione is well-known in the world of jazz: a composer and trumpeter who first came to prominence with Art Blakey's band Jazz Messenger in the 1960s. He found success after venturing out on his own in the 1970s, most notably with his 1977 song "Feels So Good" which peaked at Number 4 on the US Billboard Hot 100 (a true rarity for a jazz piece). Two of his songs have been used during the opening ceremonies at the Olympics -- Montreal in 1976 and the Winter Games in Lake Placid in 1980 -- and he composed the theme to the 1981 movie The Cannonball Run on top of a lengthy collection of jazz albums.
In addition to his past recognition, Mangione has even earned a moment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As Stephen Strange plays stump-the-surgeon with his staff in the opening scenes of the original Doctor Strange, one of them plays "Feels So Good" in an effort to flummox him. Strange names the tune without missing a beat and even expresses respect that Mangione "charted a Top 10 hit with a flügelhorn."
King of the Hill Makes Chuck Mangione a Truly Weird Spokesperson
All of those details are unusual enough to make Mangione a stand-out. The genius of King of the Hill comes from using just enough fiction to disguise the reality. Mangione makes eleven appearances on the show, largely in his fictional capacity as the spokesperson for Mega Lo Mart. That includes cheesy commercials that Hank and other characters watch on television, and cardboard stand-ups of Mangione in the local store. Most of them leverage the phrase "feels so good" into his pitch in some supremely cheesy manner.
It comes to a head in Season 7, Episode 10, "Megalo Dale," in which Hank's exterminator friend Dale Gribble is tasked with flushing out a rat infestation in the store Dale -- a hopeless conspiracy theorist -- soon comes to believe that Mangione himself is living in the store. It turns out, he's 100% correct. He finds the musician -- complete with his flügelhorn, fedora, and signature red-and-white sweater -- hiding in a living space built out of the store's giant stacks of toilet paper. He claims that his contract with Mega Lo Mart doesn't give him any time for his music or any other projects. He's taking revenge by living in their store, eating their food, trying on their underwear, and even defecating in the aisles as a sign of contempt. He helps Dale free Hank and his friends from a pair of teenage hooligans running loose in the store.
The oddity of someone like Mangione acting as a spokesperson slides effortlessly into his unusual resume. Jazz musicians aren't typically recognizable, and the genre tends to attract real artists unwilling to sell out. But beyond that -- and the absurdity of an unhinged Dale theory actually turning out to be correct -- Mangione's details as laid out on King of the Hill are 100% accurate. The series always eschewed the more outlandish satire of shows like The Simpsons and South Park in favor of a slightly bent version of reality. The show's take on Mangione feels like fiction, but he's just a short hop away from the real-life man (and supreme good sport) he's supposed to be. King of the Hill's turns that into one of its all-time best running gags. Hopefully, the announced King of the Hill Hulu reboot will find some room for him to return.