Harmony HL 7011/Columbia Records
There was a full-bodied, warm tone from his tenor saxophone and joy in his high-pitched, exuberant singing voice, which he freely admitted was patterned after his idol, Louis Armstrong.
"Mr. Pastor was a short, stocky man whose dark hair curved into a deep widow's peak, framing a face that seemed irrepressibly jovial," a reporter once observed.
He first got hold of a saxophone at the age of 16 and, after a few years, joined a succession of bands including John Cavallaro (where he met an admiring Artie Shaw), Irving Aaronson and His Commanders, and Austin Wylie.
When Shaw organized a band in 1936, he hired Pastor. Most notably during the next three years, Pastor played the sax solo on, among others, Shaw's Begin the Beguine and sang the vocals on such arrangements as Indian Love Call and Rosalie.
