Guest Gyaan - The Golden Hour (SD Burman’s twilight years: 1970-1975)

My friend, Anindya Roychowdhury, has, very kindly, allowed me to share this insightful article. Thank you, Anindya.

The Golden Hour
SD Burman’s twilight years (1970-1975)

Anindya Roychowdhury

“In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count.  It’s the life in your years.”

Abraham Lincoln

 

The game changer

1969 was perhaps the most tumultuous year in post world war history. As the world gaped in amazement at the sight of a man setting foot on the moon, a war raged on in Vietnam. Closer home in a neighboring country an uprising was brewing – which would soon turn into a full-blown war culminating in the liberation of Bangladesh two years later. Musically, 1969 was the watershed that saw the legendary Woodstock concert in upstate New York – a one-of-a-kind, uninhibited celebration of life through music, as half a million young people sang and gyrated to living legends for four days. Meanwhile, strains of the “flower children” movement that originated in America – where a section of the youth was rebelling, challenging the establishment and the war – travelled to Indian shores with the arrival of the first lot of “hippies” on the western coast of Goa and Mumbai (Bombay).[1]

Amidst this backdrop, Shakti Samanta made “Aradhana”, starring a newcomer whose previous few releases had been flops, though they did receive some critical acclaim. The rest, as they say, is history.

The increasingly non-conformational Indian youth, looking for a taste of something different, instantly made Rajesh Khanna their new idol, as the film blazed away to its platinum jubilee and the songs became anthem. Together with his “voice”, Kishore Kumar, who was reborn as a singer with this film, Rajesh Khanna became the symbol of that transformational generation.

“Aradhana” ushered in a sound so fresh and completely distinct that it sharply divided the Hindi Film Music scene forever into two eras – pre and post Aradhana.

The unlikely kingmaker behind the wings silently orchestrating this coming of age of Bollywood and its music was a 63-year old, dapper man in a dhoti kurta who, conventional wisdom would suggest, should have already been in his twilight and well past the pinnacle of creativity.

Let us then take a look at those “twilight years”, 1970-1975, when Sachin Dev Burman (SDB), defying all odds, completely reinvented and contemporized himself to not only stay relevant, but to compete head-to-head with the new generation composers (which included his own son), in the ensuing Rajesh Khanna Kishore Kumar wave that was set in motion ironically by the man himself!

SDB turns back the clock

The five-and-a-half-year period (1970-1975 upto his death) was one of his most productive. During this phase, he composed for 23 films[2] which included some of his finest output, showing absolutely no deterioration in quality. In contrast, he composed for 22 films during the entire ‘60s (1960-1969). The man who hit paydirt and national recognition relatively late in life, around 1950 at age 44, was once again turning the clock back, this time in his mid-60s, when most of his contemporaries from the 1940s and 1950s were fading out one by one, unable to adapt to the changing milieu.

Films composed by SD Burman from 1970 to 1975
1970	Prem Pujari
	Ishq Par Zor Nahin
1971	Choitali (Bengali)
	Tere Mere Sapne
	Gambler
	Naya Zamana
	Sharmilee
1972	Yeh Gulistan Hamara
	Zindagi Zindagi
	Anuraag
1973	Abhimaan
	Jugnu
	Chhupa Rustam
	Phagun
1974	Us Paar
	Prem Nagar
	Sagina
1975	Chupke Chupke
	Mili
1976	Barood
	Arjun Pandit
	Deewangee*
1977	Tyag
	Posthumously released
	*One song, rest composed by Ravindra Jain

 

Though SDB was the one who helped catapult Rajesh Khanna’s career into stratosphere, the next time he composed for him as a hero was only in 1974, “Prem Nagar” - if one were to exclude his one-song guest appearance in Shakti Samanta’s “Anuraag” (singing “Ram kare babua”) – and only once thereafter, in the posthumously released “Tyag” (1977). Many of SDB’s compositions during this period were for Dharmendra (5), Dev Anand (5, which included a non Navketan film, “Ye Gulistan Hamara”) and, at the fag end of his life, for the new, emerging megastar, Amitabh Bachchan. Like with Rajesh Khanna, SDB had a hand in Amitabh’s rise to stardom with “Abhimaan” (1973), its songs contributing in no mean measure to its success.

In his last five years, SDB gave us a dazzling and contrasting array of the old world and the new sound, deftly and seamlessly switching from one to the other as per the requirement of the soundtrack. While he composed charming ditties that evoked the feel of the ‘50s, for films like “Ishq Par Zor Nahin”, “Phagun” and “Us Paar,” whose old-fashioned storylines were in sharp contrast to the new-age trend of the time, he belted out boisterous foot tappers like “Meet na mila re” (Abhimaan) and “Bye bye miss good night” (Prem Nagar) that gave the “Yahaan wahaan saare”s (Aan Milo Sajna – Laxmikant Pyarelal) and the “Kitne sapne kitne armaan”s (Mere Jeevan saathhi – RD Burman) a run for listeners’ mindspace and wallets; from jazzy Asha Bhosle cabarets, “Reshmi ujaala hai” (Sharmilee) and “Mai hu chhui mui” (Chhupa Rustam) to the sensuous thumri, “Bedardi ban gaye koi” (in Rajinder Singh Bedi’s “Phagun”) by Shobha Gurtu, her only second outing in Bollywood after “Pakeezah” in the previous year. In “Phagun”, he also got Usha Mangeshkar to sing the famous Meera bhajan, “Mero toh Giridhar Gopal”, following in the illustrious footsteps of many legends (including MS Subbulakshmi) who had recorded various versions of it earlier. There was not a single genre that he was hesitant to delve into, even if it were outside his usual comfort zone. As these songs testify, the final output was always an aural delight.

His experimentations reach a new high

Ever the curious mind, he remained childlike and adventurous till the very end, breaking form in traditional musical construct whenever he saw an opportunity.

In a very popular song from “Ishq Par Zor Nahin”, he constructed the entire mukhra by playfully permutating just five words - Ye, dil, toh, deewana, hai – setting this otherwise completely indigenous tune pattern to a slow waltz rhythm, and adding an Arabic-styled chant (“Kaisa bedardi hai”), replete with a rabaab, in the antara.

For “Dil aaj shaayar hai” (Gambler), a supple Bhairavi once again set on a waltz rhythm, he tuned each antara differently, not repeating the wordings of the mukhra (“Dil aaj shaayar hai, gham aaj naghma hai”) again in the song.

For “Phoolon ke rang se” (Prem Pujari) and “Koyla jale” (Chhupa Rustam), he discarded the traditional mukhra-antara construct for the western-style “verse” structure. In “Prem Pujari”, he also gave us the delightful male duet (Kishore-Bhupinder), “Yaaro nilaam karo”, with its constantly shifting genre, tune and rhythm patterns. “Prem Pujari” also marked the beginning of his short-lived but sublime collaboration with lyricist Neeraj (Gopaldas Saxena), who instantly adapted to SDB’s quirky ways, producing four more gems – “Sharmilee”, “Gambler”, “Tere Mere Sapne”, and “Chhupa Rustam” - embellishing these beautiful soundtracks manifold with his inspiring poetry. Neeraj’s collaboration with SDB established him as a frontline lyricist[3], if only for a few years.

In his early Bollywood years, SDB sometimes used unintelligible, gibberish, or dummy words, usually in chorus, to magnify the on-screen impact of the song. Example, the chorus line in “Aa gupchup gupchup pyar kare” (Sazaa, 1951); this chorus line also had the catchy “dandar dandar ….dan dar da” refrain which he used again as a hook line in the song “Tere teero.n me chhupe”, in “Baazi”, released in the same year. Over the years, he had gradually discarded this device, staying away from it even in situational songs like “Hothhon pe aisi baat” (Jewel Thief, 1967) which might have presented him with the perfect opportunity to do so. Like a child indulging himself, he brought this device back in the 70s, in the songs of “Ye Gulistan Hamara” (1972), where he vocalized those tribal chants himself in “Raina soi soi” and “Kya ye zindagi hai”, and also in songs like “Thhandi hawaao.n mein” (Prem Nagar), where he made the lead singers join in with the chorus with dummy words.

In “Ye Gulistan Hamara”, he introduced Danny as a singer, while for “Sagina”, he used Kishore Kumar as the voice of Dilip Kumar, for the first and last time in Bollywood history, challenging box office stereotype. The “Sagina” songs were melodious and received varying degrees of success (as the film did not do well) but grew in listener-interest over time; in one song, “Uparwaale dukhiyo.n ki”, he meshed Dilip Kumar’s spoken words with Kishore’s singing voice so seamlessly (with Kishore pulling out a perfect voice match), that it is nearly impossible unless one listens very carefully to figure out where one voice ends and the other starts.

His experimentations with unpredictable rhythm, tune and lyric patterns continued till the very end, with the Kishore-Rafi duet from “Chupke Chupke” (1975), “Sa re ga ma, ma sa re ga”, where he constructed the entire mukhra in a sawaal-jawaab mould using only the seven notes of the sargam as the lyrics, with a seemingly disparate antara that alternates between a delicate, almost-whispered tone and full-throated singing. The song is a marvel, and reminiscent in its structure of the Kishore-Bhupinder duet that he composed for “Prem Pujari” five years earlier. It may not be out of place to mention here that Bollywood’s first sawaal-jawaab song, “Aankhon mein kya ji (Nau do gyarah, 1957) – a template that is used by composers even today - was SDB’s brainchild.

Back to his roots

Throughout this period, while jazzing up his oeuvre on the one hand, he seemed to connect to his folk roots of yore more deeply than he had ever done before in Bollywood, on the other. And more often than not, he relied on Lata to vocalize them. These would be songs like “Das gai sui” (Naya Zamana, 1971), which he recreated as “Dongshili tui”, in “Choitali”, in the same year, the only (completed) Bengali film[4] he composed for since migrating to Bombay in 1946; “Bolo pritam”, a beautifully constructed, folksy ditty from Arjun Pandit (1976); the sprightly “Ab ke sajan aangan mein” (Chupke Chupke, 1975); and “Meri paayaliya geet tere” (Jugnu, 1973) – with its brilliant rhythm pattern, a kind of a reprise of “Piya tose naina laage re” (Guide), the song starting with Lata’s spoken words in the backdrop of a dholak-madal jugalbandi followed by a deluge of percussions, where, at one point, he has Lata even vocalizing the dholak-madal sound, “Dhitang dhitang”.

The dholak remained his favorite percussion instrument through the five decades of singing and composing; he used it as the prominent rhythm instrument in countless songs, from the earthy “O roop nagar ke saudagar” (Sazaa, 1951) to the racy “Hothhon pe aisi baat” (Jewel Thief, 1967), a veritable percussion fest. In the ‘70s, when the “western sound” of drums and congas ruled the roost at the box office, SDB continued to place the dholak in pole position, for example, in the monster hit, “Chale aana” from “Jugnu”, or “Piya sang khelo holi” (Phagun, 1973), where the dholak bol (“dhin naki naki tin dhidin ti naki tin”) forms the backbone of the song.

Twenty years earlier, he had immortalized the dholak (dhol) in his seminal Bengali song, “Shei je dinguli”, (1951), a melancholic yearning for his homeland Kumilla, which was now no longer a part of his country (with the dhol beats he heard in his younger days used as a lyrical metaphor for days gone by). In 1971, he re-imagined this lament into a joyous celebration (though not altogether bereft of nostalgia-invoked pathos) of the impending liberation of Bangladesh and also as an expression of deep gratitude to his motherland, Bengal, as “Aami takdum takdum bajaai Bangladesher dhol”. Meera Dev Burman re-worked the moving original lyrics by Mohini Chowdhury.[5] Remarkably, he retained the same tune, rhythm pattern, and laya, to convey two rather contrasting moods and emotions. In some ways, he had made this tune the leitmotif of his musical career, recreating it again and again, as “Baje tak dhum tak dhum baje” (Manna De, Bambai ka babu, 1960) and “Bolo kya humko doge (Kishore-Asha, Chhupa Rustam, 1973), each time with a different antara. Interestingly, his son reprised this tune again in “Onushondhaan” (1981), with yet another antara, making this one of the most reused mukhra tunes in Hindi-Bengali modern song history!

They say that as you approach your end, forgotten memories from the distant past start coming back to you, like a flashback. His ‘70s output is dotted with snatches of tunes from his Bengali songs from years ago, that he masterfully re-arranged, almost subconsciously, to create delightfully different-sounding tunes sung by others. Example, the mukhra of “Tumi je giaachho bokulo bichhaano potthe” became “Kab maane ho dil ke mastaane” (Phagun); “Radha-r bhaabe kaaala hoilo gora” became “Kore kaagaz pe likhwaale” (Tyag)’, while “O kaalo megh bolte paaro” became “Shudhaai aami ei pothh ta ke” (Choitali). This was in addition to the many Bengali songs that he fully remade into Hindi (with relatively minor tune or rhythm variations), as he had done through his Bollywood output – example, “Borne gondhe chhonde geeti te”/”Phoolo ke rang se” (Kishore, Prem Pujari), “Bnaashi shune aar”/”Chain churaaye” (Lata, Anuraag), “Na shoshi amaare cheyo na”/”Jaa mujhe na ab yaad aa” (Kishore, Prem Nagar), and “Gaaner koli shurer durite” / “Mehbooba teri tasveer” (Rafi, Ishq Par Zor Nahin).

His lead singers in the ‘70s

Except for a few years in the first half of the ‘60s when he did not record with Lata, ostensibly for reasons other than music, she remained his undisputed first choice among singers, male and female combined. Although he created many masterpieces with Geeta (including providing her the first major career break with “Mera sundar sapnaa beet gaya”, Do Bhai, 1947) and Asha, they were exceptions rather than the rule. Several of the soundtracks that he composed in the ‘70s were dominated by Lata, who sang some of her best songs for him during this period, example, “Ishq Par Zor Nahin” (four solos and one duet), “Naya Zamana” (four solos), and Anuraag (three solos, one duet). Even in “Abhimaan”, a film about two singers, he slips in as many as three Lata solos (apart from three duets) – the resplendent “Piya bina”, Ab to hai tum se”, delicately crafted in the folksy Raag Mand, and a vibrant Pilu, “Nadiya kinaare” – against only one male solo[6], while using as many as three different voices for the male protagonist.

He had an almost familial and deep seated bonding with Manna De, who assisted him early on in his career, but he used him rather sparingly and situationally as a singer, mainly for heavily ornamented, light classical songs (a domain where Manna was invincible, and the default first choice of composers) like “Poochho na kaise”, “Pyar ke aag mein”, “Banaao batiya.n” and “Tere naina talaash kare”. Rafi, clearly, was his favorite male voice through the ‘50s and ‘60s. Except as the voice of Dev Anand where, till Aradhana happened, he used both Rafi and Kishore liberally, and in Kishore’s own films as actor, it was mostly Rafi at other times. That balance shifted after 1969.

SDB had given Kishore his first break in Bollywood in 1946 in multi-singer songs in “Shikari” and “Eight days”[7]; Khemchand Prakash gave him his first solo (Ziddi, 1948), followed by another magnificent song in Rimjhim (1949), which made the audience sit up and take notice. SDB then harnessed and finessed the raw, throaty energy in Kishore’s voice in its formative years, getting him to discard his Saigal-influenced style and gradually come into his own. However, despite the occasional “Dukhi mann mere” and “Woh dekhe toh unki inaayat” (a stunning potpourri of melodious ragas like Gaur Sarang, Kedar and Bihag, that Kishore, along with Asha, executed to perfection), their output was largely limited to the fun-song or light-song genre, in keeping with his on-screen stereotypical image, which did not do justice to his abilities though it entertained the masses and helped build his popularity. Post “Aradhana”, Kishore became SDB’s lead male singer, though he still produced occasional gems with Rafi, like the classy “Mera mann tera pyasa” (featured on Dev Anand, in Gambler, where Kishore sang all the other songs). SDB leveraged his protégé’s newfound confidence to craft intricate and nuanced tunes, like “Khilte hai gul yahan” (in raag Bhimpalasi) and Kaise kahe hum (in raag Tilang), both from “Sharmilee”, or “Dil aaj shaayar hai” (Gambler). And the dark and desolate “Badi sooni sooni hai” (Mili, 1975), their last - Kishore’s mournful rendition was perhaps heightened by the sorrow of his mentor’s slipping into a coma, from which he never recovered, soon after they had together rehearsed the song; the song was eventually recorded in absentia by SDB’s team. Earlier, SDB had also recorded an exquisite, sadly forgotten song, “Dil mera udaa jaaye”, for Arjun Pandit, which had a delayed release (1976) – an unusually tuned, layered ditty with a faraway, dreamy feel that invokes the fragrance of lush, rain-drenched meadows; it was as if the prodigal son’s perennially caged soul finally found its escape back to the green acres of Kumilla through this song and Kishore’s voice.

The changing face of his arrangers

During Vijay Anand’s “Tere Mere Sapne”, the second Hindi film to be based on an AJ Cronin novel (Citadel) - the first being Raj Khosla’s “Kaala Paani” (based on “Beyond this place”). which too was an SDB soundtrack – he had a parting of ways of sorts with the Burmans’ hitherto fungible assistant-arranger team of Basu, Manohari et al. His able and talented wife (also a fine singer and lyricist in her own right), Meera Dev Burman (MDB), moved in to fill that void, and is credited as the Assistant in most of his films from this point on. Did the “sound and feel” of his output change as a result of this significant personnel-change?

Probably not, or, even if it did, it was so deceptive that it is impossible to tell by just listening to the music.

For example, in “Tere Mere Sapne”, where eventually only MDB’s name was credited as an assistant, from the time the title credits roll, with its folksy music interspersed with SDB’s mellifluous voice, which takes an abrupt turn into a full-blown western ensemble to finish off the credits, to the quintessential, minimalist arrangements in “Mera antar ek mandir” or “Jeevan ki bagiyaa.n”, to the congas and madal-sustained rhythm (a style one has come to associate more with the Pancham-Basu-Manohari-Maruti-Kancha team) of “Maine kasam li”, and the spirited “Phurh ud chalaa”, with its heavy western style orchestration, he keeps the listener guessing. The same could also be said of the arrangements and instrument-usage in the songs of “Prem Nagar” (Assistant: MDB, Arrangers: Anil-Arun and Maruti), especially “Ye laal rang”, “Bye bye miss good night” or “Thhani haawao.n mein” or, indeed, its jazzy title music.

The reverse was true as well – the arrangement and the over-all feel of the music of “Ishq Par Zor Nahin” are in sharp contrast to what Basu-Manohari-Maruti (the assistants credited for this film) were churning out for the junior Burman soundtracks those days.

For “Choitali” (Bengali) – RD Burman is given full-screen and solo credit as the assistant music director. While the songs from this pleasant soundtrack (written both in Bengali and Hindi) were quintessential SDB, the arrangement (including the title track) reflected the “Pancham sound” of the 70s, as we know it, in a seamless fusion of two styles. A remarkable manifestation of not only their individual and combined powerhouse of talent and creativity, but of the beautiful relationship the two shared all along. A lot of what is written in the media about the father-son’s apparent “rivalry” in the ‘70s is a figment of imagination of overzealous and unscrupulous scribes looking to sell copy.

 

From this, one can conclude that the “sound” of the soundtracks was – over and above anything or anyone else - always the “SDB sound”, which varied markedly based on the requirement of the film, but was assistant-arranger agnostic.

The banyan tree of the industry

Hotaa tu pipal mai hoti

Amar lataa teri

Tere gale maala ban ke

Padi muskaati re

 

In his last few years, the industry appeared to congregate around him to accord him the status of a maverick and a father-figure – in ways that were quite unique and exclusive.

In the arty title credits of “Ishq Par Zor Nahin”, which fade in and fade out against the backdrop of magnificent landscape paintings done in a fusion of impressionistic style and the rich and colorful style of the period paintings of Indian masters like Raja Ravi Verma, SDB’s (and only his) name appears alongside a full-screen painting of him. A rare occurrence in the hundred years of Indian cinema of a composer being given such a sole honour in the title credits.

Title credits of “Ishg par zor nahin”

In “Arjun Pandit”, his name appears as the last name on the credits after that of Hrishikesh Mukherji, the director, instead of the other way round as is the general tradition; this could have been a change made later, as a tribute as he had departed by the time the film was finally released.

Gulzar, in his songless 1973 film, “Achanak”, which had music by Vasant Desai, used “Suno mere bandhu re” (sung by SDB in Bimal Roy’s Sujata) to telling effect in the background in the climax sequence. Hrishikesh Mukherjee too used this very song, and in the same year, in SDB’s own Abhimaan, in an important scene in the film. This was perhaps their joint tribute to their mentor (Bimal Roy) through what they considered was the most appropriate melody vehicle.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, as the saying goes. Right from the ‘60s, SDB inspired many music composers who, consciously or subconsciously, imbibed his style in some of their songs. Kalyanji Anandji’s “Kankariya maar ke jagaaya” from “Himalaya ke god mein” (1965), a film that got them their first Filmfare nomination, is one of the earliest such examples. The ‘70s saw both established and upcoming composers “doing an SDB” at times – example, “O ghata saawari” (Laxmikant-Pyarelal, Abhinetri), “Tera mera saathh rahe” (composed in keertan style by Ravindra Jain, Saudagar) and “Nahi chhodoge tum mera saathh” (Bappi Lahiri, Bazaar Bandh Karo).

Singers reflecting the style and mannerisms of the composers is not uncommon, perhaps a natural osmosis that occurs intuitively during the rehearsal process. In the case of SDB, his powerful and mesmerizing intonations came through in the final product articulated by his singers a lot more than they did in the case of others. Some of the best examples from the late ‘60s and the ‘70s where it almost seemed like SDB’s soul had transcended  on to the singers, would be “Khaayi hai re hum ne kasam” (Lata, Talaash, 1969, a remake of an SDB Bengali song), “Mai toh tere rang raati” (Lata, Ishq Par Zor Nahin), “Tai thhai ta ta thhai” (Asha, Tere Mere Sapne) and “Tu ne hum-e kiya diya ri” (Kishore, Zindagi Zindagi). “Piya tu ne kya kiya” (Us Paar) was a song that Yogesh wrote for SDB, but being the perfectionist that he was, SDB felt that his own frail and ageing voice would not be able to do justice to it, and thus gave it to Manna, who sang it exactly the way the composer would have. These remain beautiful, albeit involuntary, offerings of love from his favorite singers to their mentor. In “Chhupa Rustam”, of course, SDB got Kishore to mimic him in a self-deprecating parody of his own non-film song of yore, “Dheere se jaana bagiyan mein”[8]. This was a poignant example of the indulgent and humorous side of a man with an otherwise dead serious image in the industry.

The swan song

Through the ‘50s and ‘60s, directors had judiciously used the wailing pathos and texture of SDB’s unique voice to helm their films – these songs would typically play in the background like a Greek chorus to convey the despondency of the on-screen characters, or in the title credits (often reprised in the end). In contrast to his extensive output in Bengali, he did not sing much in Bollywood films, but whatever he did - songs like “Suno mere bandhu re”, “O maajhi orey maajhi”, “Wah kaun hai tera” and “Safal hogi teri aradhana” - has entered the annals of folklore.

Though he continued to sing for films almost right till the end, such outings unsurprisingly became few and far between in the ‘70s. The most memorable of them would be the lingering title songs of “Prem Pujari” and “Zindagi Zindagi”; astonishingly, old age did not seem to have an iota of effect on his tunefulness and vocal control.

SDB finished his distinguished on-film singing innings with a flourish, ironically, singing someone else’s tune (something that he had generally stopped doing in the ‘40s after he turned full-fledged composer[9]). This was the gooseflesh-inducing “Chhote chhote sapne hamaar”, from Tapan Sinha’s “Sagina”, a near frame-by-frame remake of his epoch-making Bengali original, “Sagina Mahato” (based on a real-life story by renowned journalist, Gourkishore Ghosh). The original song, written and composed by Sinha himself, and sung by Anup Ghoshal and Arati Mukherji, has become a part of the Bengali psyche. On Sinha’s request, SDB reprised this tune (Majrooh’s lyrics, too, closely followed the original written in dialected Bengali), singing just a few lines almost a cappella, and taking it to an exalted height. The song plays during title credits and is repeated in the end; it is a song of despair and shattered dreams. This author remembers the unforgettable experience of watching the film in the theater, as a boy. As the train slowly pulled away, SDB’s voice soared like a falcon to slowly engulf the whole theater, as the audience sat silent and misty-eyed, stunned by the impact of what they just experienced. The film was released in July 1974. Fifteen months later, he was gone. Leaving his countless fans tearful and shell-shocked, just like he did with his swan song.

___________________________________________________________________________

[1] Bollywood was to epitomize this “counterculture”, as it was called, in Dev Anand’s “Hare Rama Hare Krishna”, released two years later in 1971

[2] including “Deewangee”, for which he could compose only one song, with Ravindra Jain replacing him after his demise to complete the soundtrack

[3] Together with his megahit “Ae bhai zara dekh ke chalo”, for Shankar Jaikishen’s “Mera Naam Joker” (released around the same time as Prem Pujari). Recognition was hitherto somehow eluding Neeraj, despite his having earlier penned the seminal “Sapne jhare phool se” (Roshan’s “Nayi umr ki nayi fasal”)

[4] In 1957, Guru Dutt attempted to make his first Bengali film, “Gouri”, starring his wife, Geeta, with SDB as the composer. The project was aborted; a few songs were recorded and are now available in the public domain

[5] The flip side of this single had “Ke jaash re”, which he remade soon in Hindi, as “Sun ri pavan” (Anuraag, 1972)

[6] Abhiman also introduced Anuradha Paudwal – reciting a poignant shloka - to the Indian audience.

[7] These were also SDB’s first Hindi films; both the films were produced by Filmistan, which was founded by the Bombay Talkies breakaway trio of Ashok Kumar, Gyan Mukherji and Raibahadur Chunilal (composer Madan Mohan’s father)

[8] Kishore had mimicked him in this song earlier too, in “Paanch rupaya baraah aana” (Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi)

[9] He did sing “Doli me bithhayi ke” (Amar Prem), under his son’s direction, but the tune was a transcreation of his own Bengali song, “Kaalshaape dongshe amaaye”

About the author

Anindya Roychowdhury is a finance professional living in the USA. Music is his passion. He has authored thought-leadership publications on the Indian Entertainment Sector in the past and continues to write on Indian music for various publications. He grew up listening to music of many genres - from Hindustani Classical, Rabindrasangeet, Folk, Devotional, Indian film & non-film music to Western folk, Blues & Hard Rock.