Opera gave the young singer an appreciation of deeply felt emotion, but thanks to the Houstons, a black couple who had helped raise her mother, she also gravitated towards 1950s R&B. After their 1952 move to Los Angeles, one of her vocal coaches was so impressed by Yuro's blossoming voice that she gave the child lessons even when the family was unable to pay. Loved Opera and R&Bīorn Rosemarie Timotea Aurro on August 4, 1941, she spent her earliest years in Chicago, where her Italian-born mother Edith was determined to have the talented seven-year-old study opera despite the family's financial hardship. Among her many admirers was none other than Elvis Presley, who copied her style for his own version of "Hurt" during his late 1970s concert period. Although Yuro never enjoyed a career as successful as her talent seemed to warrant, she remained popular in some circles. Still playing clubs and concerts worldwide, she thrived as a much admired cult figure until throat cancer forced an early retirement. Unable to prolong her string of hits, Yuro's recording career slipped badly during the late 1960s. One of her best-known follow-up hits transformed the bitter comeuppance soul ballad "What's a Matter Baby" into an anthem of personal triumph, and turned Charlie Chaplin's standard "Smile" into a heartbreaking confession. The diminutive songstress was barely out of her teens when she employed impressive operatic histrionics to remake Roy Hamilton's "Hurt" into a Top Ten pop smash.
One of the great unheralded female singers of her era, she was blessed with the ability to phrase like R&B stars Dinah Washington and Little Esther Phillip, and she embraced both the supper club soul of Della Reese and mainstream pop. The powerful Jackie Wilson-influenced opening to the 1961 hit "Hurt" led many listeners to mistakenly believe that Timi Yuro was a young black man or-because of the spelling of her name-an Asian.
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