Song of the Week: Timi Yuro - What's A Matter Baby/Thirteenth Hour

What's A Matter Baby?

Thirteenth Hour

Small package, big voice. A teenage Timi Yuro was discovered sometime in the late 1950s singing to patrons in her parent's Italian restaurant in Los Angeles. She cut a number of albums and singles over the year, but never really "made it". Was she country? Soul? Cabaret? Pop? She didn't fit neatly into any single category. And that's tough when trying to sell records.

We feature today both sides of her June 1962 single for Liberty Records, What's A Matter Baby (Is It Hurting You)/Thirteenth Hour. I first came to What's A Matter Baby? via The Small Faces who covered the Yuro number as the Flip-Side of their debut single from the Summer of 1965. What's A Matter Baby has a real blue-eyed soul vibe to it and thus fit in perfectly for Steve Marriott and the Mod band. The song is an acerbic conversation with a past lover. A lover who cheated, ran around and bragged about it. Now that lover is getting a taste of their own medicine. And Timi is not crying any crocodile tears for her ex. Damn it, she's found somebody new!

As we are prone to do here, we like to flip our records over and listen to that other side -- the Flip-Side, if you will. We were more than pleasantly surprised by the country-esque Flip-Side, Thirteenth Hour. This could have been Patsy Cline's next big hit. But nope, it's just a kick ass song hidden On The Flip-Side of a kick ass single.

Until next time, we'll see you On The Flip-Side!