Sam Noto

Sam Noto was born on April 17, 1930, at 69 Busti Avenue on the Lower West Side of Buffalo, New York. He was the third of five children of Louis and Santina (nee Territo) Noto, Italian immigrants from Sutera, Sicily, who had first lived in Birmingham, Alabama, where Louis worked as a coal miner and stoked factory furnaces.

The Depression hit the family hard. Noto later recalled that his father lost his construction job, the family car was repossessed, and the Notos went on welfare, pulling a wagon downtown to collect cheese, flour and butter. The family later moved to Seventh Street. He remembered the childhood mischief of the neighbourhood, raiding fruit trees and doughnut trucks with other boys, and the whippings that followed.

Noto started on trumpet at about age 12 in the band at Buffalo Public School 76 under a teacher he remembered as Mr. Bish. A new trumpet cost 89 dollars, more than his parents could afford, so he rented one from the school for two dollars. He graduated from School 76 in 1944. A music teacher, Mr. Weis, wrote a solo for him, and Noto began altering it, which he said was how he started learning chords and scales.

He hoped to attend a high school with a strong music programme, but his father and older brother Bill insisted on a trade, so he studied linotype printing at Burgard Vocational High School. His only formal trumpet training was in grade school; he was otherwise self-taught. Around age 14, hearing Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie's "Shaw 'Nuff" in a record store listening booth changed his direction for good.

At 16 Noto left Burgard to tour with Allen Craig's commercial dance band, earning 55 dollars a week, until the leader vanished with two weeks of payroll. He then toured with Dean Hudson's band, was offered and lost a chair with Claude Thornhill, and at 17 joined Clyde McCoy, quitting after McCoy objected to a bebop solo. Back in Buffalo he played 29 shows a week in the pit band at the Palace Burlesque.

At 23 he was called in for Stan Kenton's Buffalo date after a bus accident sidelined two trumpeters, and he went on the road with the band the next day. The 1954 Festival of Modern American Jazz tour put him on stage nightly with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. He played lead and solo trumpet with Kenton full time until 1958, toured Europe with Louie Bellson and Pearl Bailey in 1959, rejoined Kenton in 1960, and played with Count Basie in two separate periods between 1964 and 1967.

In Buffalo he led groups with Joe Romano, Don Menza and Larry Covelli, and in 1965 co-founded the Renaissance club on Pearl Street with Lou Marinaccio. In the late 1960s he moved to Las Vegas for casino show-band work at the Silver Slipper with trombonist Carl Fontana. There Red Rodney heard him and set up the 1974 album Superbop, which led to his run of Xanadu albums as a leader from 1975.

From 1975 he was based in Toronto, working as a first-call studio player and a member of Rob McConnell's Boss Brass, and leading his own small groups. He returned to the Buffalo area in 1988 and kept performing in both cities into his nineties, including weekly big band rehearsals at the Sportsmen's Tavern in Black Rock.

As a leader Noto recorded Entrance! (Xanadu, 1975), Act One (Xanadu, 1975), Notes to You (Xanadu, 1977), Noto-Riety (Xanadu), 2-4-5 (Unisson, 1987) and Now Hear This (Supermono, 1999). He co-led Superbop with Red Rodney (Muse, 1974) and took part in the Xanadu sessions True Blue and Silver Blue (1976) with Dexter Gordon, Al Cohn and Blue Mitchell, Kenny Drew's For Sure! (1978) and the Xanadu in Montreux concerts of July 15, 1978.

With Stan Kenton he appears on Kenton Showcase, Contemporary Concepts, Kenton in Hi-Fi, Cuban Fire!, Rendezvous with Kenton and Back to Balboa; with Count Basie on Pop Goes the Basie, The Happiest Millionaire and Half a Sixpence; and with Rob McConnell on The Jazz Album, Live in Digital and Night Flight.

He began composing after informal arranging lessons from a trombonist in Las Vegas and later received a government grant to write jazz charts in Toronto. His originals include "Cross Chris", "Jen-Jen", "Lady Arleen", "Quasinoto", "Notes to You" and "Noto-Riety".

Noto married Arleen Christian, whom he met on a blind date and who, he liked to say, already knew all about Bird and Diz. She toured Europe with him during his Kenton years and predeceased him. They had four children: Michael John Noto, Christopher James Noto, Andrew Jeremy Noto and Jennifer Jean Greene. He also had seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

He was a United States Army veteran. In later years he lived in Fort Erie, Ontario, just across the Niagara River from Buffalo, and his obituary describes him as of Buffalo, New York. Friends and writers remembered him as a gifted storyteller with a big, infectious laugh.

Noto described bebop as the music that turned his life around, and he remained devoted to the language of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro and Clifford Brown throughout his career. Of the after-hours sessions at the Renaissance he said that getting to play the music he wanted all the time was fantastic and that he broke through a lot of barriers there.

He invested his own money twice in Buffalo jazz clubs, and at Renaissance II he set aside Monday nights to showcase aspiring local players, reflecting a commitment to the city's jazz community.

Writer Phil Nyhuis called him a jazz trumpet virtuoso of a kind that could only burst upon the Buffalo music scene once in a couple of centuries. His Xanadu albums of the late 1970s gave him a national profile as a bop soloist, and critic Scott Yanow described him as an excellent bop soloist. He was one of the last of the generation of players who came up in the 1940s directly inspired by the first bebop records.

His career is documented in Joey Giambra's biography Sam Noto: A Life in Jazz, by the Canadian Jazz Archive, and by JazzBuffalo, which marked his 90th birthday in 2020. A YouTube channel under the name Chris Noto hosts many of his live and studio performances.

In June 2008, two decades after he left Toronto, Noto was honoured with a celebration at the Rex Hotel attended by many of the city's top trumpet players and a contingent of Buffalo fans. JazzBuffalo publicly marked his 90th birthday on April 17, 2020. No formal awards have been confirmed in the sources reviewed.

Sam Noto died on October 16, 2026, at the age of 96. Lombardo Funeral Home in Amherst, New York, announced his death and said services would be private. The cause of death has not been made public. He was predeceased by his wife Arleen and is survived by his four children, seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.