Lobo Nocho

Ernest Leroy Nocho (January 14, 1919 – September 4, 1997), better known by his stage name Lobo Nocho, was an emigré jazz singer and painter in Europe. A former United States citizen, he settled in Europe after serving in World War II, and renounced his citizenship in 1950 to become a French citizen. He was later widely noted for his romantic links to Winston Churchill's daughter Sarah Churchill.

Early life Nocho was born in Philadelphia in 1919. He was one of six children of African Americans Samuel Nocho and Mary Jackson. He spent his youth in the city, graduating from Simon Gratz High School. His teachers at Gratz High remembered him as an outstanding art student whose paintings won municipal awards and were exhibited in major department stores such as Wanamaker's and Gimbels. His wife, who had remained behind in Montreal, obtained United States permanent residence through her marriage to him, and moved to New York, settling in Harlem.

Nocho enjoyed various professional successes in Europe, working as a jazz singer for Paris, Malta, and Rome nightclubs to earn a living while also continuing to paint, making him one of a number of African Americans in France pursuing careers in the arts in those years. By a year after the war ended he had found a regular gig at Schubert's club in Montparnasse, singing in both English and French. In 1952 he appeared at Jean's Intrigue in Paris, performing alongside fellow African-American émigré Aaron Bridgers. In September 1962, a Paris court found him guilty of smoking marijuana, and fined him NF500.

In 1971, Nocho visited New York City to watch Hazel Scott play piano in a fashion show, in which singer Freda Payne also appeared, and reminisced with them about African Americans in the Paris music scene in the 1950s. David Amram would later praise him as "one of the finest jazz singers I had heard in Paris", also noting his skills on the drums and in dance and his encyclopedic knowledge of jazz music. A book of Nocho's poetry was published by Vantage Press at the beginning of September 1997. He died just days later and was buried at the Calverton National Cemetery in Suffolk County, New York. Nocho gave a number of his paintings to Churchill's friend Pete Ballard, which the latter donated to North Carolina Central University in 2013.

However, in the end Churchill and Nocho never married. In her 1981 autobiography, she described him as a "vision in Levis, a jet-age troubadour and a one-man debating society". She hinted in her published poetry that her late father had strongly disapproved of her relationship with Nocho, writing:

Forgive me if I do not cry The day you die The simplest reason that I know You said you'd rather have it so And: This is what I have chosen This moment bitter and free This is what I have chosen From so much that was offered to me Life showered her costliest gifts And a safe passage home, if need be But this is what I have chosen This moment so bitter ... and so free.