Yma Sumac: Singer who moved from folk music to Broadway and Hollywood

Known as "The Peruvian Songbird", Yma Sumac is in the record books for possessing a five-octave range. To have a voice which spanned the length of a piano was an extraordinary achievement, but it was little more than a gimmick, as some of her notes were questionable. She proudly stated that she had had no formal musical education, which was probably a disadvantage.

Claiming to be a direct descendant of Atahualpa, the last Incan Emperor, who died in 1533, Yma Sumac was born Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chavarri del Castillo in Ichocan, Peru in 1922. From an early age, she spent her time in the mountains singing folk songs and pretending the rocks were her audience. She imitated the birds and soon realised that she possessed a wide range. She was singing on the radio when she was 13, eventually being heard across South America.

In 1943, she met and married the composer Moises Vivanco, who renamed her Imma Sumack ("the beautiful one"). With a dancer – her cousin Cholita Rivero – and Vivanco on guitar, she formed the Inca Taky Trio, which specialised in the music of the Incas. Sumac recorded folk songs with traditional accompaniment in Peru, but when she signed with Capitol Records in 1950, the bandleader Les Baxter combined her voice with lush orchestral accompaniments. Her voice to him was a publicity stunt and he knew how to use the new-fangled echo chambers to enhance it. He also changed her name to Yma Sumac; to her annoyance, a gossip columnist spelt it backwards and claimed she was Amy Camus from Brooklyn.

Featuring traditional Peruvian songs, often directed at the mountain gods, Voice Of The Xtabay (1950) was an unlikely success, selling 100,000 copies. Wearing vivid stage costumes designed with her sister, Sumac appeared with Baxter at the Hollywood Bowl and many other prestigious venues, but she was never happy with him, or indeed Vivanco, claiming that they both denied her songwriting credits. Her stormy marriage resulted in a son, Charles, born in 1949. She and Vivanco divorced and remarried, divorcing again in 1965.

Sumac appeared as a foreign princess in the Broadway musical Flahooley in 1951 and in the films Secrets Of The Incas (1954) and Omar Khayyam with Cornel Wilde (1956). She made several other albums, including Legend Of The Sun Virgin (1952), Inca Taqui (1953), Mambo! (1954), Legend Of The Jivaro (1957) and Fuego Del Ande (1959). Although she did not have hit singles, she used her extraordinary voice on a recording of the South African folk song "Wimoweh", in 1952.

Sumac toured the world in the early 1960s, recording a live album, Recital, in Bucharest. Incensed by an Italian critic who told her she could not expect good reviews, she sang part of The Magic Flute, unaccompanied, to a standing ovation. She was so popular in Russia that she toured there for six months in 1961.

Despite her grievances with Baxter they were reunited for the oddest of all rock albums, Miracles, in 1972. Disappointed with the record, Sumac refused to promote it. In 1988, she was one of several celebrities appearing on an album of Disney songs, Stay Awake, though lullabies were hardly her forte.

In recent years the resurgence of so-called "exotica" has extended to her albums – all have been reissued – and her songs have featured in The Big Lebowski, Ordinary Decent Criminal and Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind. In 2006 she returned to Peru, where she collected seven awards.

Spencer Leigh

Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chavarri del Castillo (Yma Sumac), singer: born Ichocan, Peru 13 September 1922; married 1943 Moises Vivanco (one son; marriage dissolved), married 1957 Moises Vivanco (marriage dissolved); died Los Angeles 1 November 2008.