Who was your first

When I was a teenager my mom owned Billy Joel's album 52nd street. In the song Zanzibar, Freddie Hubbard blows a trumpet solo that, when I first heard it, I listened to over and over. I decided then and there that I liked this jazz stuff. Freddie Hubbard is a long way down on my list of jazz favorites, but I cannot deny that his Zanzibar solo truly was the gateway drug for me.

Goldeneraguy,

I can take or leave "Feels So Good" these days though it was a big breakthrough hit for the guy back in the 70's.

The Mangione album I still own, play with some regularity and really enjoy is "Tarantella".

Does "Chicago" count?

How about "Blood Sweat and Tears"?.

Didn't a lot of folks get first exposure to some finer and more accessible elements of Jazz through these guys?

Mapman
Your examples are not Jazz in its strict sense and what are "fine and more accessible elements" of Jazz? To me, Jazz is essentially "black music" and for sociological reasons alone, think of Mingus, Parker, Miles, it is not necessarily intended to sound "fine" but rather "dirty" and is essentially, when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, a musical answer to the social ostracism suffered by the Afro-American community in the heyday of Jazz. Black musicians will tell you, that later this music was "stolen" from them by and became mainstream. Just to add to what Cwlondon said above.

Ella Fitzgerald - specifically the Rome 40th birthday concert.