Remembering Yma Sumac’s Life and Her Visit to KC
By CHARLES FERRUZZA
Like a lot of Baby Boomers, my introduction to “pop” music was my father’s collection of record albums – and they really were albums in those days, with heavy-to-lift “collections” in book-like jackets containing two or three thick 78 RPM discs tucked into paper sleeves. Dad had very eclectic taste in music, dating back to his days as a “swinging single” in the 1950s when his seduction technique included shakers of martinis, dim lighting and the latest records by Perry Como, Dean Martin, Marilyn Maye and – strangest of all – the “Incan Princess” Yma Sumac. Even a little kid couldn’t help but be fascinated by her hard-to-pronounce songs (“Cha Cha Gitano”), her incredible four-octave range or her gloriously campy LP covers, like the one for Voice of the Xtabay or Mambo!
Sumac, whose “real life” was shrouded in mystery – was she really a singer named Amy Camus from Brooklyn who spelled her name backwards, a rumor that followed her for decades? – who died this past Saturday at age 86, had been, like many pop culture icons, “rediscovered” after a long period of neglect after her career faded in the 1960s. Until 1998, when the soundtrack to the Coen brothers movie, The Big Lebowski reintroduced the legendary “princess of the Andes” (she claimed to be descended from the Incan emperor Atahualpa) to modern audiences, Yma Sumac was best-known as a frequent answer to crossword puzzle questions.
