Music And Movies

(You can read the earlier parts here:  Part 1 ,  Part 2 ,  Part 3 ,  Part 4 ,  Part 5 ,  Part 6  , Part 7  ) The Telugu film music saw a gradual decline from the 1960s. The 1970s did provide good quality music but there was decline compared to the 1960s. The 1980s was an extremely bad period for Telugu saved by music directors from outside of the state, mainly Illayaraja. Otherwise the main music directors for Telugu films like Chakravarthy, in decline K V Mahadevan, J V Raghavulu et al produced lot of forgettable music. When I look back at the moves from 1981 to 1985, the percentage of movies which had good music is low.  Don't mistake me for that person who always feels 'Old is Gold'. The truth was that Tamil was having its most glorious period as far as film music goes. With Illayaraja at his peak, Tamil film music reached heights which no other film music was able to reach before or since. Malayalam too had good music directors in that era like Johnson Master, Raveendra

(MSV-SPB) You can read the earlier parts here: Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 , Part 5 , Part 6   Raja's coming to the scene happened at the right time. M S Viswanathan who was the dominant music director in Tamil was slowly losing his form. Let me say, his form became uneven in those time. If you look at the list of films that MSV did between 1976 and 1979, you will surprised that you have never heard of many of movies. The songs too were middling and forgettable. The other upcoming music directors at that time were Shankar Ganesh duo and Vijaybhaskar. V. Kumar too scored music for some films. Of these Shankar Ganesh would go on to score for lot of films. Like Chakravarthy in Telugu, they too would churn out tune after eminently forgettable tune. MSV though gave some amazing numbers in this period. What I was talking earlier was the percentage of good songs that he gave, which was getting lower. His combination with Balachander produced some melodies which are popular to this d

  (S Janaki, Illayaraja, SPB) Links to earlier parts:  Part 1 ,  Part 2 ,  Part 3 ,  Part 4  & Part 5  ) SPB was establishing himself as the major singer in Telugu and Tami music field in the early 70s. In 1976, Illayaraja, who was a friend of SPB, made his debut in 'Annakili'. Illayaraja was at that time assisting music G K Venkatesh and also playing harmonium in SPB's light music troupe. Raja, for various reasons could not use SPB in his first couple of movie. It is said that 'oru naal unnodu oru naal' (Uravadum Nenjam) was the first recorded song but 'naan pesa vandhen' was the first released song of Raja SPB combination. SPB was to sing his major hits for Raja in the 80s but they gave a lot of superb songs in 1970s as well. We must remember that Raja was entering a music industry which had some entrenched singers and a lot of actor singer combination. So throughout the 70s, you keep seeing movies in which SPB is not featured at all. Raja was using a

(Sankarabharanam) Links to earlier parts: Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 & Part 4  In the year 1980, a film was released which had all the necessary requirements to be a huge disaster at the box office. The hero was an unknown drama actor, a middle aged man. The heroine, an unknown dancer, again playing the role of a middle aged woman. Subject of the film: Carnatic music. The only two well known faces were those of Chandramohan, a middle tier hero and Nirmala, who acted as his mother. Neither of them were box office draws. The music was heavily classical music based, an anathema for Telugu film music of those times. K. Vishwanath, who had directed the film had a tough time releasing it as no distributor wanted to touch such a sure shot disaster. Finally somehow the film was released and the first week proved that whoever had shied away from buying this film were correct. Then a miracle happened. The next week on the film picked up and within no time everyone in Andhra Pradesh wanted to

  Link to earlier parts: Part 1 , Part 2 and Part 3 Let us return back to the Telugu film music scene now. As I had mentioned in Part 2, with Ghantasala passing away in Feb 1974, the top slot for the male singer fell vacant. There were two competing singers at that time who had the opportunity to fill this slot. One of V. Ramakrishna and other was SPB. In the initial stages, of the two top heroes, NTR preferred the voice of SPB while Nageshwar Rao was using the voice of Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna depended on his voice being very similar to Ghantasala to take him to the top slot. SPB depended on his versatility and his ability to sing like the hero to take him to the top slot. Slowly and steadily, SPB captured the top slot in the Telugu film music industry. SPB's voice fitted easily for the new heroes like Krishna, Shoban Babu, Chandramohan and so on. The problem was with NTR and Nageshwar Rao. This was because NTR and Nageshwar Rao's voices were closely associated with the voice

(MSV and SPB) Here are the links to  Part-1   and  Part-2   of this series In the 60s and 70s the whole of South Indian film industry was based in Tamil Nadu. It was quite natural for SPB to try and sing for Tamil movies. Tamil film world was dominated by two personalities, M G Ramachandran (MGR) and Sivaji Ganesan. MGR later went on to become the CM of Tamil Nadu and even to this day Sivaji Ganesan is seen as the greatest actor Tamil film world had produced. In the music department, it was M S Vishwanathan (MSV) was ruling the roost. In Telugu there were multiple music directors like Rajeshwar Rao, Pendyala and Mahadevan who were famous whereas in Tamil, MSV dominated the scene. K V Mahadevan, Vijaybhaskar, V Kumar, Veda and others were also part of the music scene but the best film, with exception of some MGR films, went to MSV. In the siingers front, T M Soundarajan (TMS) was the voice of both MGR and Sivaji while P.Susheela was the preferred female voice. PB Srinivas was the voice

  (SPB, Ghantasala, P B Sreenivas) In Part 1 , we saw about the legend called Ghantasala who dominated the Telugu film industry. As I had mentioned, SPB had to be sing in such a way that people who were so used to Ghantasala's voice would accept his voice as well. His voice was in direct contrast to Ghantasala's voice. He had a 'soft' voice, a voice that was closer in tone to P B Srinivasa than to Ghantasala. Ghatntasala was well trained in classical music while SPB was a self taught singer and did not have any formal education. It was a formidable challenge that SPB had to overcome. SPB started his career singing for S P Kodandapani. Having heard him sing in some function, S P Kodadandapani approached SPB and told him that he would give him a chance to sing in films. SPB was skeptical since he didn't know who Kodandapani was. S P Kodandapani kept his word and in the year 1967 SPB recorded his first song for the movie, 'Sri Sri Maryada Ramanna".  This is th

Ghantasala Venkateswara Rao (Photo source: Quora) I plan to do a multi part series on SPB, tracing his music career in Tamil, Telugu and Kannada film music. I will not be concentrating on other aspects of SPB like his acting or dubbing career. I will occasionally be making reference to some of the singing shows he did for different TV Channels. You must be surprised as to why the first part of this series is titled, ' A Legend called Ghantasala'. The idea is to give you a picture about the Telugu film music scene when SPB made his appearance. He recorded his first song for 'Sree Sree Maryadaramanna' in Dec 1966 (according to Wiki). The movie is listed as a 1967 release. So we can say that people heard SPB first in 1967. In 1967, the leading stars of Telugu films were N T Rama Rao (NTR) and Akkineni Nageshwar Rao (ANR). Actor Krishna was making his mark. The popular music directors included K V Mahadevan, S Rajeshwar Rao, Pendyala Nageshwar Rao. Other music directors li