"Timi Yuro was an America soul singer during the ‘60s. Though many assumed when they heard her commercially acclaimed debut single ""Hurt"" that she was an African American male, she was actually an Italian-American female.Born in Chicago in 1940, Rosemarie Timotea Aurro moved to Los Angeles where she started taking vocal lessons with Dr. Lilliam Goodman. By the mid ‘50s Yuro (the family adopted the phonetic spelling of their surname) was performing at local nightclubs and restaurants. While showcasing her strong vocal chords at the local restaurant Alvoturnos, which she made famous, talent scout Sonny ""Confidential"" Knight brought her to Al Bennett, Liberty Records label head, and he signed her on the spot. Initially, Yuro found Liberty's material weighing her down as it didn't really showcase all that she could do. Demanding material that was anything but soft ballads, she worked with producer Clyde Otis to record the 1954 Roy Hamilton R&B single ""Hurt."" What impressed audiences was not only the maturity of the single but that Yuro was less than five feet tall and only 20 years old.In 1962, she opened for Frank Sinatra in Australia and released her sophomore LP Soul! Again, audiences were struck by her hard vocals and cabaret style melodies that separated her from just another soul singer and pushed her into the easy listening category. Throughout the '60s, she had several more successful singles reach the Billboard charts, many of them cover pieces from country western artists and blues singers. By 1968, she hadn't seen a hit single in a few years but returned with the theme song to Interlude. She continued to work into the next decade, even after she was diagnosed with throat cancer, before she had to undergo a tracheotomy operation in 1984 that left her unable to sing. She died in March 2004."