When she compromised her own musical impulses by appearing at the Blue Angel in New York, Capitol Records decided to take a risk; her first album for them, produced by Alan Livingstone, was released in 1950 . The record was a hit and, wearing exotic clothes and jewellery, Yma Sumac played to packed houses at the Hollywood Bowl and New York’s Hotel Pierre. Her voice became so well known that she became the subject of impersonations by comediennes : Joan Turner would do three or four bars of a Simac number and then spit, and growl: “Yma Tarmac - huh!’