I had written my first post on Kalyanji-Anandji about ten years ago on their best songs for Mukesh and had titled it “Made for each other”. I used that phrase studiedly because that was my instinctive feeling. Nudging by a reader made me explore their more songs – for Rafi, Other male singers, and Lata Mangeshkar and other female singers in the current year. I now discover that he composed more than twice the songs for Rafi as he did for Mukesh. But I still hold on to “Made for each other” tag for KA-Mukesh. All this discussion was limited to the 50s and 60s.READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Kishore Kumar
Ravi’s many-splendoured genius with the ‘other’ singers
We now come to the end of the series on Ravi. In my opening post in the series we saw him as a many-splendoured genius with a large number of songs for themes and occasions, which have acquired an iconic status, many of which made the readers exclaim, Oh, this is also composed by him! Yet when some of us hesitated in bracketing him among the ‘greats’, Hans Jakhar was not pleased and challenged that at the end of the series we would concede that Ravi deserves to be called a ‘great’ music director. Without getting stuck on the semantics, please recall subsequent posts in the series: Rafi’s solos, Rafi’s duets, Asha Bhosle’s songs by him, Ravi’s special partnership with Shakeel Badayuni, Ravi’s songs for Lata Mangeshkar, and Mahendra Kapoor. That is a massive list of superhit songs with most of the major playback singers. But that is not the end of his work. He composed great songs for other playback singers too, and in this respect he ranks with those music directors whose special strength was their diversity in working with different playback singers, unlike some who were fixated on a couple of their favourites.
Best songs of Kishore Kumar 1.0
A tribute to Kishore Kumar (4 August 1929 to 13 October 1987) on his 30th death anniversary
A later version of an operating system is considered superior to its earlier version. That is, ‘Windows 1o’ is superior to ‘Windows 8’, which is superior to ‘Windows 7’, and so on. However, that is not true for music. A singer or a music director’s career follows an inverted U-curve. After progressively rising to the peak, there is a plateau and, thereafter, there is decline. Kishore Kumar must be the only exception to this law. After 20 years of singing career starting from his debut in 1948, post-Aradhana (1969) his career zoomed to a higher trajectory, reaching another peak when he became the pole star of male playback singing. I have metaphorically said Kishore Kumar became the new Rafi in my post titled Mohammad Rafi versus Kishore Kumar, which specifically addressed how an era changed after Aaradhana. Kishore Kumar 2.0 (i.e. post-1969) sang about four times more songs than his previous two decades’ career, i.e. Kishore Kumar 1.0.
Kishore Kumar’s duets by SD Burman
A tribute on Kishore Kumar’s death anniversary October 13
It is befitting that I am completing my (renewed) series on SD Burman with the singer he was most fond of. With 115 songs, he gave Kishore Kumar more songs than any other (male) singer. Surjit Singh’s site indicates that out of this only 53 were solos, and 62 were duets and other songs. If you just start recalling their songs, duets are as likely to flood your memory as the solos. Can SD Burman-KK be complete without Kora kagaz tha ye man mera, Gata rahe mera dil, Aasman ke neeche hum aaj apne peeche or Chhod do aanchal zamana kya kahega? Therefore, when I resumed the SD Burman series with his different singers, it soon became clear that I have to do Kishore Kumar duets, too, to complement his solos I did last year.
Kishore Kumar’s best songs by SD Burman
It is widely reported that SD Burman had a special fondness for Kishore Kumar. In my earlier posts some statistics has also been discussed regarding SD Burman’s number of songs with different singers. Kishore Kumar has more than any other male singer – beating his nearest rival Rafi by 53 solos to 46 (115 to 94 taking solos and duets together), and others by a wide margin. Hans has given excellent analysis by breaking these numbers into three phases – the initial phase of 1946-56, the middle period of 1957-65 and the last phase of 1966-75. So to the extent these numbers convey a message, Kishore Kumar, besides being a lovable lad, was also SD Burman’s most preferred singer.
Kishore Kumar – The best mad, crazy, comic songs
A tribute on his death anniversary October 13
MJ Akbar in his obituary to Shammi Kapoor wrote in India Today that one reason for Shammi Kapoor craze was that he was mad. But who was the maddest of them all? The great superstar Amitabh Bachchan could do a mad act with straight face. You can think of his job interview with Ranjit in Namak Halal where he shows his English speaking proficiency. But Kishore Kumar did not need to do an act. He was mad. He was crazy, he was wild. He would sing – in Hindi, in English, in Bengali, in Gibberish; he would dance, he would squat, he would jump, he would roll, he would sleep – all in the same song of 3 minutes. There was no logic to his madness. No one chased his girl more relentlessly; no one teased her more irritatingly. Some of his girls were good sports; they would play along with the fun. Some others were prim, proper and well brought up. They were exasperated, they would scream, they would do their darndest to ward him off. But he won them all in the end. And they were the biggest of their time – Nutan, Vyjayantimala and Madhubala.
Mohammad Rafi versus Kishore Kumar
An era changes with Aradhana (1969)
When Aradhana unfolded in 1969 with the heroine sitting by the window of the hill train, tentatively browsing a book, and the hero being driven in a jonga by his friend on the hilly road alongside the toy train, with an innocent smile, a wink in his eyes and the harmonica on his friend’s lips, singing Mere sapno ki rani kab ayegi tu, a phenomenon called Rajesh Khanna was born. Also born was another and perhaps more startling phenomenon – a new Kishore Kumar who with this one film swept aside Rafi to emerge as the No.1 male singer. Rafi did have two duets in the film Bagon mein bahaar hai (with Lata) and Gunguna rahe hain bhanwre (with Asha Bhosle), but Kishore Kumar with Lata surpassed him with Kora kagaz tha ye man mera, and Rafi had nothing to counter his two solos Mere sapno ki rani kab ayegi tu and Roop tera mastana.