All music lovers of Hindi Film songs should be highly indebted to the Great Music Directors of the Golden Era of 1950s and 1960s. Most of these music directors left a treasure of melodious songs behind them, which we still want to listen and enjoy even after 50 years.
Many movies of the golden era have been long forgotten, yet the songs of these old movies still linger on to entertain us over and over again. There are lots of inside stories associated with these old music directors. The purpose of my article is to bring forward some of these inside stories to the readers.
I have written this article based on what I read in various cine magazines, Marathi books on film music, various radio and TV interviews. Later, I validated this information by checking with insiders of the Hindi film industry.
Shankar-Jaikishen: Popularly known as SJ, they were considered to be the magicians of swaras. They were the most prolific in composing variety of songs with almost no repetition. Almost every song of every movie, which was composed by this duo, was a super hit. SJ were responsible for bringing in more than 200 instrumentalists to support a song. In the 1940s, before SJ arrived on the scene, there used to be only
4 to 5 musicians to accompany a song. SJ were the trendsetters, and most of the time, other music directors had to follow this SJ trend or opt out from music industry.
When the song `Kahan jaa raha hai’ from Film Seema was recorded in Rafi’s voice, in the final antara of the song `…Vo kyun tod daale’, his voice cracked while rendering the word `tod’. Normally, any such discrepancy would be removed and the song re-recorded.
Shankar ordered that this song be re-recorded. But Jaikishen intervened and told Shankar to retain this song with the cracked voice at the word `tod’. Since this song was being picturized for a tragic sequence, it would be very effective if this cracked voice was retained, Jaikishen reasoned. This was finally accepted by Shankar and this song with the discrepancy was retained as the final version. Those who saw this movie can see for themselves how effective Jaikishen’s decision was.
When the song `Mujhe tumse kuch bhi na chaahiye’ from Film Kanhaiyaa was being composed, one of Jaikishen’s beloved uncles had just died. Jaikishen was in a very sad mood. He instructed lyricist Hasrat Jaipuri to write the lyrics that will express Jaikishen’s sad feelings at the time. Hasrat Jaipuri did justice by penning down appropriate sad words. Jaikishen set the tune in raga Darbari. And all of us know how sad we get when we listen to this song, especially when we listen to the lyrics `Mujhe mere haal pe chod do’. In reality, this song represents the sadness Jaikishen felt at the time of composing this song.