Yma Sumac was born September 10, 1922 in Peru. She is the queen of exotica music and during the 1950s she produced a series of legendary lounge recordings featuring Hollywood-style versions of Incan and South American folk songs, working with the likes of Les Baxter and Billy May.
She's my all time favorite lounge artist possessing a haunting 4 octave vocal range and is reported to be an Incan Princess. I remember listening to my Dad’s boxed set of 45’s of Voice of the Xtabay and pretending to be her. The old girl still show’s up occasionally for unannounced performance dates and I remember she was on the David Letterman Show in the late 1980’s.
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I have to thank (?) you for sending me on a long bizarre trip into Yma Sumac-dom last night. I thought I wouldn't make it out alive, but the trip was worth it.
ReplyDeleteI'd never actually heard her, only *about* her....even from my mother... who spoke of her in hushed tones, like one might God, or the dead.