All Great Mds' Preference For Rafi Saab!, Some Widely-reported Stories On This Options

[venkat]

Friends,

That all great MDs during the Platinum-era of HFM from 1947 to 1972 had a distinct preference for Rafi Saab is crystal-clear, well-known and needs no debate, as the historical facts and statistics speak for themselves.

But, there were some instances of extreme display of this tendency by some of the great MDs of olden days.

In this thread, let us narrate and discuss some of such instances.

To start with, I recall one radio interview that I heard very long back, which gave me the following information.

In early, mid and late fifties, it was fashionable to listen to Talat Mehmood songs and somewhat over-rate him. Many Industry bigwigs, such as Anil Biswas, Bimal Roy, etc., too were not immune to this tendency.

So, when Bimal Roy was making Sujata (1959), he had advised S.D.Burman to use Talat Mehmood for the great SDB composition, "Jalte Hain Jis Ke Liye".

But, S.D.Burman was far from enamoured by Talat Mehmood's style of singing. He wanted to utilise only Rafi Saab for this sublime composition and tried to reason out with Bimal Roy. But, as Bimal Roy wouldn't listen, he had to finally use Talat Mehmood.

But, what is really amusing was that during the rehearsals and recording, S.D.Burman made no secret of his displeasure to poor Talat Ji. He even used to say, "Yeh Boda Achha Composition Hoy. Is Ko Khorab Mot Koro".

Such was SDB's bullishness on Rafi Saab.

More later.

Venkat

PS. It is a different matter that the song, "Jalte Hain Jis Ke liye", from Sujata happened to have been sung by Talat Mehmood extremely well and it is a great favorite of mine. But, the above was just to illustrate great MDs' stubborn preference for Rafi Saab.

This post has been edited by venkat: Sep 27 2008, 04:12 PM

[parag_sankla]

SS ji, big thanks for the pointer to the article. And yes, I agree with Venkat ji who said that this is a well-researched article with detailed information on Rafi sahab.

I have read a book in Marathi (written by famous music expert Shirish Kanekar) titled "Gaaye chala jaa" "Yaadon ki baraat". In his article on Rafi sahab, this is what Shirish says :

Counting songs of Mohd Rafi is like counting the grains in a huge warehouse of grains. He sang for the hero, the side hero, the comedian and the beggar on the street (meaning all in the same film on many occassions).

There are many more nice things written in that article. I will try to get hold of a copy of it, then will translate the article in English for the benefit of all.

Cheers
Parag

This post has been edited by parag_sankla: Oct 22 2008, 11:46 AM