Soul

The little girl with the big voice, Timi Yuro exploded onto the music scene in 1961 with her debut single Hurt, a cover version of a 1954 R&B hit. That hit came after Timi had convinced record company executives that her true vocation lay in R&B music rather than the lightweight material they had been selecting for her. The listener might be forgiven for thinking that Soul! Contains more material in a similar vein to Hurt, but instead this is a collection of pop and jazz standards. With the orchestra arranged and conducted by Belford Hendricks and accompaniment by the Lois Winter Sings, Timi does a more than competent job with the material at hand, especially on such numbers as Stardust, even if it is miles away from the sheer emotional impact of Hurt. Yet Timi would prove to be more than capable of moving in the adult pop circles, into which this album inevitably falls.