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

[venkat]

Friends,

We all know O.P.Nayyar is probably the only MD who never made Lata Ji sing even one song for him!!!

When asked for reasons for the same, he always used to say her voice did not suit his compositions. Well, we do not know whether that is the actual reason or there was some other real reason!!!

Coming to Rafi Saab, there is one MD who almost had the same attitude to Rafi Saab as did O.P.Nayyar to Lata! And that MD is Anil Biswas.

Currently, Vividhbharati is carrying a daily series featuring Tushar Bhatia's interview with Anil Biswas and Meena Kapoor, as a repeat broadcast. So far, it has run for 23 days, of 10 minutes each day. Daily, at least 4 to 5 songs/clips are being played in the course of this interview, as per Anil Biswas's choice. But, so far, just two Rafi songs were mentioned by Anil Da. Even while discussing Naushad Saab's work, he did not recall any Rafi song!!!

It appears even Anil Biswas had gone on record saying that Rafi is not suited to his compositions, just the same way OPN said of Lata!!

But, there is a small difference. OPN never had even once recorded with Lata Ji , but Anil Biswas had some 15 to 20 songs with Rafi Saab!! Some consolation!!

In this context, some of you may remember that there used to be a very nice program on Zee TV called Saregama, anchored very ably by Sonu Nigam. In one of the finals of that program, one US-based singer called Ramabhadran reached the finals. On the way to the final, he sang beautifully such great Rafi songs as "Jaane Kya Dhhondthi Rehti Hai Yeh Aankhen Mujh Mein" from Film:Shola Aur Shabnam(1961).

The Judge in the finals happened to be Anil Biswas. In that connection, Ramabhadran had close interaction with Anil Biswas. He chose to share the details in an article at the following link. You may find it interesting.

http://www.angelfire.com/film/anilbiswas/m...es_sanjeev.html

Venkat

This post has been edited by venkat: Oct 12 2009, 12:46 PM