And the SOY Award for the best duet of 1941 goes to?
I have mentioned the special charm of duets for the variety they add to the film music. In the Vintage Era it is more pronounced as we come across many gems by singers whose names we have not heard.
The long term average of number of songs gives a pattern – the number of duets is more than male solos but far short of female solos. As we run down the list of MEMORABLE SONGS in the overview post, we can see 21 duets. Sharp observers can see the total of the three categories does not add up. This deviation by 1 or 2 is because of errors in classification – some songs classified as solos should be classified as duets as we discover another distinct voice. Needless to say our analysis is not complete if we don’t include the duets – many of them are absolutely superlative though some singers are completely unknown.
Guest article by Ashok Vaishnav continuing the centenary celebrations of Mohammad Rafi (24.12.1924-31.7.1980)
(Among many romantic solos of Rafi there are several gems hidden under the layer of superhit songs. Some of the hidden gems are more melodious than superhit songs. Our SOY regular and guest author today, Ashok Vaishnav, throws the spotlight on some such gems. Ashokji is a is a prolific writer for SOY on a variety of themes. He is a known Rafi-fan, and it was unthinkable that he would not join in his centenary celebrations
As a retired engineer and now a management trainer Ashokji brings analytical rigour to his articles. He is based out of Ahmedabad. Thank you Ashokji for this interesting write-up. – AK)
The spectrum of Mohammad Rafi’s songs through his entire career contains innumerable hues and shades, even within a given genre. Moreover, every historian or an analyst or a fan of him who have been writing, or airing the views, about his songs have had their own context or view. As such, every piece has always come out as a totally different view under the kaleidoscope. It would, perhaps, be a very safe bet to say that anything written or said about Mohammad Rafi’s songs will start repeating if, and only when, human imaginations and interests (or even those of AI in the future 😊) will reach their limits. The occasion of celebration of Mohammad Rafi’s birth centenary year has made the viewing of the spectrum of Mohammad Rafi’s songs more intense and more microscopic, and hence, much more interesting.
And the SOY Award for the Best Female Singer goes to?
As the readers are aware from the year-wise reviews, the female solos on the average far outnumber the male solos. In the Overview Post of the best songs of 1941, I had included 71 songs. In the Wrap Up 1 about the best male solos in the year I mentioned there were 17 male solos distributed among 7 singers in the list of MEMORABLE SONGS in the overview post. If you run down the same list you would find 35 female solos divided among 19 singers as follows:
Guest article by DP Rangan as a joint tribute to Rafi on his 44th Remembrance Day and Johnny Walker on his 21st Remembrance Day.
(The title of this post says it all. When you think of Johnny Walker you think of Rafi. JW established a presence for himself and soon the producers and music directors realised that giving a song or two to him increased the commercial prospects of a film. For a comedian to achieve that status was remarkable. Thus, many songs picturised on him achieved iconic status, and are often remembered till today towering over other songs in the film. The credit was also due to Rafi who could modulate his voice to sound like JW.
The indefatigable guest author DP Rangan describes this relationship in detail as only he could. The statistics relate to only those songs that Rafi sang for Johnny Walker. JW lip-synched several songs on the screen, sung by other singers. Further, JW acted in many films in which he had no songs or no songs by Rafi. That is why you would see difference in the number of films in two tables – one only for movies, and the other movies and songs.
The symbiotic relationship between JW and Rafi extended to another unique aspect. Their death anniversaries are separated by two days. Today is Rafi’s 44th Remembrance Day. We had JW’s 21st Remembrance Day two days ago. This is a befitting tribute to two great artists in symbiosis. Thank you Mr Rangan for another superb article. – AK)
The first post in the blog SOY for 2024 was posted on 1st January by AKji, on the late Mohammad Rafi (hereinafter referred to as Rafi for brevity), a superlative playback singer who straddled the film world as a giant for over 35 years from 1944 till his early demise in July 1980. A series of articles will probably appear during this centenary year of his birth. This is my humble endeavour to contribute at least one article on the symbiotic relations he had with the noted comedian Johnny Walker (JW). I am stretching the meaning of “symbiosis” a little by taking refuge under the assumption that one is a playback singer and the other is an actor, though both are homo sapiens. AKji has written everything of note about Rafi and I have nothing further to contribute.
If you were to ask me which singer I associate most with Kalyanji-Anandji, my answer would be instantly Mukesh. It was natural I wrote a post on Mukesh-KA in the initial years of the blog with the title, Made for each other. When I started looking for their Rafi songs as a part of his centenary celebrations I was surprised to find that he composed about twice the number of songs for Rafi as he did for Mukesh, and some of them are absolutely gorgeous. That led to a post on Rafi-KA combination on the occasion of Kalyanji’s 96th birth anniversary (30 June 2024).
Continuing Rafi’s centenary celebrations, guest article by Sivanandam Palamadai on his songs picturised on not-so-famous actors
(Songs Of Yore has been celebrating Rafi’s centenary year 2024 with a series of articles, some by guest authors. Sivanandam Palamdai, who is one of Rafi’s prominent fans in blogosphere, now writes on his songs for not-so-famous actors. We selected this topic after some mutual back and forth discussion which he describes in some detail in the beginning of his article. But he has modestly not mentioned one development which as the host I must, that shows his utmost dedication and sincerity. After we had settled on this topic, he suffered some serious medical condition requiring hospitalisation. I had no inkling of this until I pinged him after a couple of months how he was doing. Despite my requesting him to forget the article and concentrate on his health, he came up with this brilliant piece as soon as his physical condition permitted.
Mr Palamdai has been a marketing professional, now based out of Pune for about 28 years in semi-retirement by choice. I convey my thanks to him on behalf of all the readers for the painstaking efforts he has taken to write this excellent article. – AK)
Almost two years back, I had written my first blog for SOY on the theme of Rafi’s songs for unrecognised composers. In this birth centenary year of the legend Mohammad Rafi, AK Ji and myself were discussing on something similar and it was AK Ji who came out with the brilliant idea of focusing on his songs for those actors who were not the top heroes. Writing for SOY is always a privilege and I thank AK Ji for providing me an opportunity to continue my blogs here.
The initial idea was to select one song for all the top heroes, but we felt that would be a huge list and selecting one song would be a difficult task. Hence we decided to rather focus on those actors who were not among the top heroes. I had initially titled this article as Rafi’s songs for lesser-known and obscure actors, but that may lead to some debate as some of the actors cannot be categorized as lesser-known. You will understand once you got through the article. That is the reason I changed this to “Not the top heroes”! The language may appear not so elegant but would describe the category perfectly.
Continuing the series on Rafi with a tribute to Kalyanji (30 June 1928-24 August 2000) and Anandji (2 March 1933-) on Kalyanji’s 96th birth anniversary.
When you think of Kalyanji-Anandji’s main playback singers, Mukesh comes to mind first. They seemed to be made for each other, and there is already a post on KA-Mukesh combination on this blog with this title. They composed the most songs for Mukesh, a little more than Shankar-Jaikishan. What was remarkable was that while SJ-Mukesh were generally regular for Raj Kapoor, KA had Raj Kapoor as the hero for only two films, their Mukesh songs were widely spread over many actors.
Our elections are now over after a most toxic campaign. When the two formations were not abusing each other they were competing in promising the electorate moon. Voters seem to have now become smart. They must have realised that most of the promises would not be, cannot be fulfilled. There is no free lunch; if someone offers something free, something else has to give way. But one of the two principal rivals came up with a nice tagline: “My guarantee also means a guarantee that the guarantee would be fulfilled.” That is a good one, something like “Raj Raj Raj & Company”. In Shree 420 the dreams of the people were fulfilled, in the real world the voters have to wait for the bounties promised to them.
When I started this blog I never imagined that it would go on for so long. And it is not just clocking year after year. Songs of Yore is perhaps the only place where you will find a comprehensive series on Arrangers and Musicians, the people who embellished the songs with various instrumental preludes, interludes and postludes, but who remained behind the curtain. The series started in January 2023 and after 14 articles has come to a close in April 2024. Our familiarity with names like Sebastian D’Souza, Van Shipley, Anthony Gonsalves, Goody Seervai, Manohari Singh etc. may not have been more than just knowing their names. The series helped us know more about them and also connect famous songs they were associated with. We can’t thank enough the guest authors Piyush M Pandya (Gujarati original) and Ashok M Vaishnav (English translation) who wrote the articles in the series. They so fittingly titled each article as “The Sculptors of Film Music”. Our indefatigable DP Rangan turned out a number of guest articles on a variety of themes.
And the SOY Award for the Best Male Singer goes to?
In KL Saigal’s active years, the Best Male Singer was generally a one-horse race. He has sung great songs in 1941, too, in the film Lagan. Yet he is not a runaway winner. Nay, I would say with Doctor (1941) in which Pankaj Mullick appears as an actor-singer and the music director, he came up with a score of a lifetime. With six immortal solos from this film which I have included in the Overview Post, Pankaj Mullick is by far the front-runner in 1941.
