1948

Best songs of 1948: Final Wrap Up 4

Naushad_C Ramchandra_Ghulam Haider_Husnlal Bhagatram December 25, 2017

And the Songs of Yore Award for the Best Music Director goes to? I start with wishing the readers  Merry Christmas. After the Overview post and the three category-wise wrap ups – Wrap Up 1 for the best male solos, Wrap Up 2 for the best female solos, and Wrap Up 3 for the best […]

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Best songs of 1948: Wrap Up 3

Best songs of 1948 November 12, 2017

And the Songs of Yore Award for the Best Duet goes to? As per the long-term average, female solos outnumber male solos by a big margin, with duets somewhere in between. The same is true for the year 1948. My list of 114/115 MEMORABLE SONGS in the Overview post has the following break-up:   Male […]

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Best songs of 1948: Wrap Up 2

Lata Mangeshkar-Shamshad Begum-Suraiya-Surinder Kaur October 23, 2017

And the Songs of Yore Award for the Best Female Playback Singer goes to? The readers may recall from my Overview post, and the detailed review of the best songs of 1949, that one significant difference between the two consecutive years was in Lata Mangeshkar coming as a tsunami wave in 1949, leaving her competitors […]

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Best songs of 1948 songs: Wrap Up 1

Rafi and Mukesh September 18, 2017

And the Songs of Yore award for the best male solo goes to? Some general observations are in order. The year 1948 did not have a great diversity of male playback singers, unlike the female singers. KL Saigal had passed away a year earlier; Talat Mahmood would appear a couple of years later; Hemant Kumar […]

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The first duo Husnlal-Bhagatram (1): Their songs for Suraiya, Lata Mangeshkar and Rafi

Husnlal-Bhagatram July 11, 2017

I have signed off the series on Shankar-Jaikishan recently. Before that I had done series on Anil Biswas, Naushad, C Ramchandra and SD Burman. As the readers now expect the next famous music directors in line, there are some yesteryears stalwarts who shone like meteor for a short while, or who gave great music consistently over […]

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Best songs of 1948: And the winners are?

Mela-Nadiya Ke Paar-Shaheed-Aag-Anokha Pyar-Anokhi Ada March 22, 2017

On our journey back in time to review the best songs of the year, as we reach 1948 we are entering the Vintage Era characterised by a great variety of full-throated female singers. Lata Mangeshkar did sing over 40 songs of which you can count about ten memorable and a couple of all-time great songs, […]

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