Timi Yuro - Biography
Timi Yuro’s propensity for belting out soulful renditions of pop standards arranged for a mainstream white audience with the same fervor she brought to R&B songs made her difficult to classify when her career began in the late 1950s. In hindsight, this genre straddling made her one of the originators of what came to be known as blue-eyed soul. However, her timbre was closer to that of the black soul and blues singers from the period than to Dusty Springfield’s. Yuro had a voice that approached Aretha Franklin’s in power and control, and much like Etta James, her delivery could elicit painful empathy from the simplest of lyrics.
It did not take very long after her birth in Chicago, Illinois, on August 4, 1940, for Rosemary Timotea Aurro’s parents, Louis and Edith, to discover their child’s prodigious vocal ability. Edith, in particular, tried to coax little Timi (a diminutive of ‘Timotea’) into classical music with operatic vocal lessons before she had turned 7. However, her grandmother, who operated some Southside Chicago blues clubs, would sneak her in to hear the likes of Mildred Bailey and a young Dinah Washington. Another countervailing influence came from the Houstons, a black family living on the bottom floor of the Aurro house. Mrs. Houston was Timi’s nanny, letting her listen to the family’s R&B vinyl collection, as well as bringing her to church every Sunday to listen to live gospel music.
After changing their surname to the phonetic spelling of Yuro, the family relocated to Los Angeles in 1952. Once there, Louis and Edith opened a restaurant called Alvoturnos, which struggled for its first few years as a fine dining establishment with cabaret. It was not until the Yuros changed it into a venue for developing R&B and rock performers that it became a hotspot for young Angelenos. Much of the restaurant’s popularity was due to their daughter, who started performing there in the mid-1950s. Timi had been studying under Frankie Laine’s vocal coach, Lillian Goodman, gratis after having dazzled the teacher with her rendition of Ernesto de Curtis’ “Sorrento.” In late 1959, Liberty Records talent scout, Sonny Knight (a former R&B singer who had a hit with “Confidential” in 1956) heard one of young Yuro’s performances at Alvoturnos and recommended the singer to label head Al Bennett. He signed Yuro immediately with the idea that she would be another milquetoast darling with whom some hits could be manufactured for pop radio.
Exasperated by the frothy material Liberty was having her try on demos, Yuro stormed into Bennett’s office in early 1961, demanding that he either tear up her contract or let her record something substantial enough for her voice. She won the argument by doing an a cappella version of Jimmie Crane and Al Jacobs’ “Hurt” (an R&B hit for Roy Hamilton in 1954). With producer Clyde Otis and arranger Belford Hendricks (a team behind some of Dinah Washington’s hits), Yuro recorded the song for her first single. As a songwriter and producer, Otis would prove to be her most significant musical partner over the years. Despite the single’s ability to make one’s intestines quiver, it was not until Yuro created demand for the song by guilefully sending out a few acetates to DJs that the Liberty executives were convinced to release it. “Hurt” lasted for 3 months on the charts, peaking at #4 on the pop chart and #22 on the R&B chart. Even its B-side, “I Apologize,” made it #72 on the pop chart. Now committed to their artist, Liberty released her first album, Hurt!!!!!!! (1961), while the single was still firmly on the charts. Yuro finished out the year with her version of Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile” (#42) and a duet with fading heartthrob crooner Johnnie Ray on “I Believe.”
As the forced duet with Ray suggested, Liberty was unsure of how to promote her. Was Yuro a pop singer, soul singer or cabaret act? Even the audience for her first single thought she might be a black male performer. Such demographic confusion only increased when Yuro embarked on an Australian tour opening for Frank Sinatra. She was being promoted in a way that did not fully encompass her own varied musical style. Hurt!!!!!!! would be her only commercially successful LP.
Released within 10 months of the first, her next 2 albums, Soul! and Let Me Call You Sweetheart (both 1962 Liberty), were collections of pop standards (e.g., Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust” and her fourth single, Leo Friedman and Beth Whitson’s “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” -- #66 on the pop chart), with the third release containing a few originals (e.g., Otis and Yuro’s “She Really Loves You”). In an attempt to target his artist to the R&B crowd, Otis had Yuro record his own Drifters-inspired song, “Count Everything,” to no avail. The song did, however, point the way to what most fans consider her highest artistic achievement, What’s A Matter Baby (1963 Liberty), an all-too-often forgotten classic of 1960s soul. When Otis left Liberty during the recording of the title track, Phil Spector was brought in to finish producing the song. With Spector’s large-sounding instrumentation and backing la-la-las, Yuro found a production style that could compete with her voice. The song itself is a masterpiece of schadenfreude, penned by Otis and Joy Byers, in which its female narrator mocks a former unfaithful lover as he is going through the same heartache he put her through. Nevertheless, Yuro had to pull the same tactic as with “Hurt” to get Liberty to release the single. “What’s A Matter Baby” proved to be a big crossover hit, peaking at #12 and #16 on the pop and R&B charts, respectively.
Later in 1963, Yuro had the last major hit of her career with Hank Cochran’s classic of love-lost misanthropy, “Make The World Go Away” (#24 on the pop chart and #8 on the easy listening chart). Inspired by Ray Charles’ recent success with his take on the genre, she released an entire album of bluesy versions of classic country songs named after her successful single. The album spawned her final hit for Liberty, the presciently chosen “Gotta Travel On.” With her Otis now gone, Yuro left Liberty and signed with Mercury Records. Her stay there was brief, lasting three years and producing only one album, The Amazing Timi Yuro (1964). Quincy Jones served as producer and the record was Yuro’s personal favorite, but it was not until the third single — once again following Roy Hamilton with a rendition of his hit, the William Cook-penned “You Can Have Him” — that she managed to break Billboard’s Hot 100 (and only just barely at #96 in early 1965). Clearly, she was destined to be appreciated only by a cult following and considered a one-hit wonder by the mainstream. Her recording of Teddy Rendazzo’s “Can’t Stop Running Away,” for example, would not find much of an audience until Britain’s Northern Soul movement began regularly playing it in the clubs in the late 1970s.
Yuro recorded around a dozen more songs for Mercury (including Johnny Guitar Watson’s “Cuttin’ In” and four Italian-language classics for Italy’s San Remo Festival in 1965) and then went back to Liberty in early 1968. During the interim, she recorded the theme song for the film Interlude (1968), which failed to achieve much notice until her admirers Morrissey and Siousxie Sioux recorded a duet version in 1994. Yuro briefly moved to London to record much of Something Bad On My Mind (1968), for which Hendricks returned as arranger and producer Otis regularly stopped by to give advice. The record and titular single were commercial flops, but the second single, “It’ll Never Be Over For Me,” went on to become a highly sought after collectible among her Northern Soul devotees. In 1969, a few days before its release date, Liberty canceled her next album, Live at PJ’s (1969-from a concert at the legendary Los Angeles nightclub; a complete version was finally released in 2006 on the UK label RPM Records). Over the course of that same year, Yuro married Robert Selnick and gave birth to their daughter, Milan. Frustrated with her stalled career, she retired and moved with her new family to Las Vegas, Nevada.
Except for the occasional live performance and two singles on minor labels — “Southern Lady” (1975 Playboy Records) and “Nothing Takes The Place Of You” (1979 Frequency Records) — Yuro spent the 1970s raising her daughter. It was not until a recut version of Hurt began climbing the Dutch charts in the late 1970s that she decided to come out retirement. Unfortunately, she lost her voice in 1980 due to throat cancer just as she was about to capitalize on her newfound European success. After recovering from throat surgery, Yuro went to Nashville to record 3 albums in the next 2 years for European labels (All Alone Am I for Dureco Records in 1981, Today for Ariola Records in 1982 and For Sentimental Reasons for Arcade Records in 1983), none of which received stateside distribution.
Following a sold-out 2-week stint at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas and a series of successful European tours, she returned to the studio to record another European-only release, Sings Willie Nelson (1984 Ariola). Repaying the kindness the Yuro family had shown him in his lean years, Nelson produced, played on and paid for the recording of the album. This resurgence was short-lived, however, due to the recurrence of throat cancer. More surgery followed, from which Yuro recovered well enough to record a second volume of Nelson’s songs. That would be her last recording. The cancer returned in the late 1980s, requiring a tracheotomy that effectively destroyed her singing voice. Separating from her husband at some point along the way, Yuro spent her remaining years with her daughter’s family in Vegas while continuing the prolonged battle with cancer. She lost a lung to the disease in 1995, her larynx in 2002 and eventually her life on March 30, 2004.
