Timi Yuro

Known as “the little girl with the big voice,” Timi Yuro ranked as the leading white soul singer in the United States throughout the 1960s. Her debut single, the million-selling “Hurt,” presented a vocalist whose emotional intensity and rich timbre prompted countless listeners to assume the performer was male, African American, or both. Although she never repeated that commercial peak, her strongest sides merit comparison with those of Aretha Franklin, Irma Thomas, and the era’s other premier soul vocalists.

Born Rosemarie Timotea Aurro on August 4, 1940, in Chicago to an Italian-American family that ran a neighborhood restaurant, she took childhood voice lessons; legend holds that her nanny also slipped her into the city’s storied blues clubs, where the youngster—nicknamed Timi—heard transformative performances by Dinah Washington and Mildred Bailey. The family adopted the phonetic spelling of their surname and moved to Los Angeles in 1952, where Yuro trained with vocal coach Dr. Lillian Goodman. By mid-decade she was appearing in nightclubs despite her parents’ disapproval. Her shows at the family’s Hollywood eatery, Alvoturnos, not only rescued the business from financial collapse but turned it into one of Tinseltown’s most sought-after spots.

A late-1959 performance at Alvoturnos persuaded Liberty Records scout Sonny “Confidential” Knight to recommend her to label president Al Bennett, who promptly signed the singer. Frustrated by the lightweight material Liberty supplied, Yuro endured months of mismatched demos before bursting into a 1961 board meeting and threatening to tear up her contract unless the company allowed her to record more suitable songs. She then delivered an a cappella version of Roy Hamilton’s 1954 R&B hit “Hurt,” so impressing the executives that she entered the studio in June 1961 with producer Clyde Otis to preserve the track. The assured debut reached number four on the Billboard pop chart that fall and number 22 on the R&B chart. Television viewers across racial lines were surprised to discover that the deeply felt ballad came from a twenty-year-old white woman under five feet tall. Her follow-up, a reading of Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile,” peaked at number 42 late in 1961; Liberty closed the year with the one-off pairing “I Believe” alongside pop idol Johnnie Ray.

Early 1962 found Yuro opening for Frank Sinatra on a short Australian tour. While the exposure raised her profile, it also cemented the impression that she was a cabaret artist rather than a soul singer—an image reinforced by her fourth single, a revival of “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” which climbed only to number 66 on the pop chart yet reached the easy-listening Top 20. Despite its title, the second album, Soul!, largely comprised standards, though she revisited her R&B roots with the excellent Drifters tribute “Count Everything.” During sessions for the next single, “What’s a Matter Baby,” producer Otis abruptly departed Liberty, and the tapes passed to interim replacement Phil Spector. The finished track displayed Spector’s signature hallmarks—lush strings, driving rhythm, and Yuro’s impassioned vocal—and became her biggest hit since “Hurt,” reaching number 12 pop and number 16 R&B. Burt Bacharach and Hal David supplied her subsequent release, “The Love of a Boy,” which rose to number 44 in early 1963; its follow-up, “Insult to Injury,” stopped at number 81.

Inspired by Ray Charles’s country excursions, Yuro next tackled Hank Cochran’s “Make the World Go Away,” securing her final major U.S. hit at number 24 pop and number eight easy listening. The country album of the same name yielded two minor chart entries—“Gotta Travel On” and “Permanently Lonely”—and after 1964’s “Should I Ever Love Again” she left Liberty for Mercury. There she issued “If,” which peaked at number 120; her third Mercury single, a cover of Roy Hamilton’s “You Can Have Him,” became her only Hot 100 entry on the label, reaching number 96 in early 1965. Teddy Randazzo wrote the luminous “Get Out of My Life,” a commercial failure whose B-side, “Can’t Stop Running Away,” later found favor with Britain’s Northern soul collectors. Returning to her Italian heritage, Yuro recorded “Ti Credo” for Italy’s 1965 San Remo Festival. Her American visibility had by then virtually vanished, and later Mercury releases such as 1966’s “Don’t Keep Me Lonely Too Long” and the following year’s blues-inflected treatment of Johnny “Guitar” Watson’s “Cuttin’ In” made no chart impact.

She rejoined Liberty in early 1968 and traveled to Britain to record the proposed comeback single “Something Bad on My Mind.” Though widely regarded as her strongest effort in years, it failed to chart. The theme song she recorded for Douglas Sirk’s film Interlude met a similar fate, yet was later covered by Morrissey and Siouxsie Sioux; “It’ll Never Be Over for Me” also stalled commercially but became a Northern soul staple whose original pressings command over one hundred pounds apiece. A live album, Live at PJ’s, was slated for summer 1969 release but withdrawn days before street date. Yuro departed Liberty soon afterward, settled in Las Vegas, and began raising a family. She performed only occasionally during the ensuing decade, briefly resurfacing in 1975 on the short-lived Playboy label with “Southern Lady,” which reached number 108. For Willie Mitchell’s Frequency imprint she cut a memorable version of Toussaint McCall’s “Nothing Takes the Place of You” in 1979. Diagnosed with throat cancer a year later, she recovered sufficiently to record several albums for the Dutch market as well as 1982’s Timi Yuro Today, produced and funded by longtime friend Willie Nelson. A tracheotomy in 1984 ended her singing career. She died on March 30, 2004, at age 63.