Some Suspect Rock ‘n Roll Was Banned in Our House.
Don’t Worry Mom, She’s Italian!
Timi Yuro missed a golden chance for her career to be really spectacular. She turned down legendary composer Burt Bacharach’s offer to record WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW IS LOVE, in late 1962. She had already charted Number 1 a year earlier with HURT, and she followed up with WHAT’S THE MATTER BABY? at Number 12. The second one still echoes eternally in my head sort of like my second heartbeat.
She recorded this pounding teenage revenge song against the wishes of executives at her Liberty record label. Her powerful, almost masculine voice exuded the influence of blues great, Dinah Washington. The song, punctuated by the occasional muffled sob, established her, along with the Righteous Brothers, as primary evolutionary examples of classic “blue eyed soul” music.
Listen—hhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQxgUNRSwvw
My high school years at Surrattsville revolved around sports and rock ‘n roll. When we weren’t playing some kind of ball, we were in my best friend Ralph’s living room grooving to the latest platters spun by WEAM DJ’s Jay Perry, and later, Bob Rickman. Perry was a mellow, dignified editorialist for early R & B. Alternately, Rickman was a quixotic mad man who once played Bill Doggett’s organ/saxophone classic, HONKEY TONK (Part II), 22 consecutive times on his afternoon show, Rock 60.
But the real king of rock ‘n roll in Washington, DC was the unstoppable Milt Grant, whose kool teen dance party aired live on weekdays at 5:00 pm on WTTG, Channel 5. From 1956-1961, Milt consistently boasted a higher total viewership than Dick Clark’s American Bandstand in neighboring Philadelphia. Grant was also a big force in advancing the careers of the singers who guested live on the show.
In early 1961, Ralph and I ventured downtown to try to squeeze(sneak) in to Grant’s show. No girls would even talk to or dance with nerds like us. But we hoped to see and perhaps speak to Screaming Jay Hawkins who was scheduled to belt out his iconic hit, I PUT A SPELL ON YOU, that afternoon. You had to be borderline demented to love the grunting, growling, shrieking Hawkins, and that is basically how we were back then.
But Milt had a second live act that day. Timi Yuro was riding high with her smash ballad HURT. We liked her too because of her smokey blues voice and Italian good looks. We gained illicit entry to the hotel studio only because Ralph’s cousin from Badin was working door security. While we chatted him up, in walked Timi trying to bum a cigarette before she went on.
For some reason, she sort of latched on to me after Ralph’s cousin slipped her a cig. She was gregarious but also a bit depressed. She had a lot of parental issues going on back home in LA. Her folks didn’t like the fact that her singing took her as a teenager into lots of seedy nightclubs. She became a heavy smoker and her parents couldn’t accept her emerging entertainer’s life style. For a few minutes, she kinda poured her heart out to me. This was probably because I was a goofy social misfit, skinny with dorky, clear plastic framed glasses. No threat to hit on her or anybody else.
Finally, she had to get to the dressing room for makeup. I was shocked when she asked to exchange phone numbers. We talked erratically several times over the next few months. Nothing romantic, I was just a dumbstruck shoulder for her to cry on.
I bought her 45 RPM of HURT and later, WHAT’S THE MATTER BABY?. My mom became painfully familiar with her work and she nervously watched me accept a couple of her sardonic long distance phone calls. My mom basically distrusted most rock ‘n roll, especially because Ralph and I were obsessed with it. She eventually banned RUMBLE by local pioneer guitarist, Link Wray, from our home. Maybe she was on to something because shortly thereafter nearly every radio station in the country followed suit, claiming the music bred “juvenile delinquency”. It quickly rose to Number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 strictly by word of mouth. She later pulled the plug on our TV as Jerry Lee Lewis pounded out GREAT BALLS OF FIRE on the Alan Freed Show. This music could obviously undermine a whole nation!
One afternoon when I was playing Timi’s robust, blues voice for the umpteenth time, Mom blurted out: “You don’t need to be consorting with girls of another race!” I sat dumbfounded. She obviously had little appreciation for Timi’s adoration and emulation of Dinah Washington. She and thousands of other misguided white radio listeners mistakenly thought Timi was black. I tried to sound matter of fact when I mumbled cryptically, “Don’t worry Mom, she’s Italian!
Timi’s career twisted, turned, and eventually fizzled. One can only wonder what might have happened if she had back then recorded one of Bacharach’s greatest songs. Jackie De Shannon sold millions with WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW IS LOVE. Timi eventually retired from singing in 1969 to get married.
She much later made a strong comeback starting in the Netherlands in 1981 with ALL ALONE AM I. It got very hot and she finally earned a Gold Record. I never spoke to her again after our few disjointed confabs in 1961-62. She kept on smoking and died of throat cancer at 65. I still can’t get her angry, throaty blues classic, WHAT’S THE MATTER BABY?, out of my mind. That’s why I wrote this homage to a great white blues singer with powerful pipes who could wail with the best of them, including the venerable Dinah Washington. Besides me, her biggest fan was probably a guy named Elvis who often reserved a front row table many nights when she performed in Las Vegas. He soon recorded HURT and several of her other songs. Maybe he couldn’t get her pounding voice out of his head either?
