Impressed with the attention paid her by the press, John Hammond signed Hunter to Columbia Records. He had not previously shown interest in Hunter, but he had been a close associate of Barney Josephson decades earlier, when the latter ran the Café Society Uptown and Downtown clubs. Her Columbia albums, The Glory of Alberta Hunter, Amtrak Blues (on which she sang the jazz classic "The Darktown Strutters' Ball"), and Look For the Silver Li Ning, did not sell as well as expected, but sales were nevertheless healthy. There were also numerous appearances on television programs, including To Tell the Truth (in which panelist Kitty Carlisle had to recuse herself, the two having known each other in Hunter's heyday). She also had a walk-on role in Remember My Name, a 1978 film by the Producer Robert Altman, for which he commissioned her to write and to perform the Soundtrack music.