Rajesh Khanna, The Super Star Options

[swarapriya]

Rajesh Khanna, The Super Star

Rajesh Khanna was dubbed as the first Super Star of the Hindi screen. In a reign of five years, from 1969 to 1973, he made a hit after hit that was unprecedented in the Hindi cinema history. He was working on stage when he won the talent contest by the United Producers of Bombay. These were the 10 producers who formed a team to select new talent as an answer to escalating salaries for the established stars.

Rajesh's first movie was Chetan Anand's "Aakhri Khat" released in 1966. Inspite of a great director and some beautiful music, the film was a commercial failure. But things changed when in 1969, Shakti Samanta's "Aradhana" was released. The movie with its beautiful music and strong performance by Sharmila Tagore created history. In Rajesh Khanna, a star was born. And for the next few years, he couldn't do anything wrong.

Rajesh made nearly 130 movies in his professional career. One of our Forum members, Debjyoti, gave me this idea to start a thread on the songs of his albums. By happy coincidence I have CDs of almost all of his movie albums. In the coming months, I will start sharing these albums in chronological order.

Here is part one of Rajesh Khanna's filmography ...

[swarapriya]

Kati Patang (1970)

Here is R.D. Burman at his best. This is just one great album with superbly composed songs. In a rare appearance Mukesh sings for RD and the result is mind blowing. "Jis Gali Mein" is one my favorites of Mukesh. All three solos by Kishore are also absolute delight. The solo by Lata, the title song, is also a classic. Asha Parekh won Filmfare award as best actress for her role in this movie.

Various popular singers of today have sung Kishore's songs from this movie. I am including some of them here. These will be uploaded right after the main songs as a second installment.

Now for details of the songs and the songs themselves ...