Thursday, March 26, 2020

Lockdown Legends (Day 2) : PLAYBACK THROWBACK




On Day 2 of the Lockdown , we look at the most unusual songs for which playback has ever been given.


PLAYBACK THROWBACK
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The voice is Rafi's who was a classically trained singer, but the on-screen presence is of Kishore Kumar, a singer par excellence himself.
When the song was released, there was an erroneous belief that it was offered by O.P.Nayyar to Rafi Sahaab.
The unknown fact behind this move was that initially the hero of this film “Raagini” was Bharat Bhushan and accordingly this song was recorded in Rafi’s voice to suit the actor mainly considering the stupendous success of Baiju Bawra.
Subsequently the lead role was enacted by Kishore Kumar and to save on the expenses of re-recording the song all over again in Kishore da’s voice it was decided to retain the earlier version sung by Rafi Sahab in this film.



There are other songs also, which were sung by Rafi for Kishore.
Prominent amongst them are “Ajab hai dastaan teree hai zindagi” from the film Shararat in the year 1959, “Hume koyee gam hai” , “Masiha banke bimaron ke chale ho kahan karke jee bekarar” from the film Bhagam Bhag in the year 1956, Main is masoom chehre ko from Baaghi Shehzada 1964 and Apni aadat hai sabko salaam karte hain from Pyar Diwana 1972, apart from other less popular ones.


Apart from Rafi, there were cases of other singers also singing for on-screen Kishore !
Hemant Kumar sang the sad version of Chhota sa ghar hoga in Naukri, the peppy song by Kishore himself.  Focusing on unemployment among educated youth in independent India, this film by Bimal Roy had music by Salil Choudhury, for whom, Kishore remained an untested potential on screen and Hemant Kumar was the preferred voice . It  took a lot of convincing on the part of the makers to sign Kishore. However, Salil da  retained the sadder version of it, with Kishore lip-syncing to Hemant's  voice.







 It is rumoured that Kishore-da who could at times act finicky about payments had decided not to record songs for this movie because of not having been paid. Manna Dey sang the song Aap huye mere, for Krorepati 1961.





The icing on the cake is certainly the song from the film Baap re baap 1955, in which see who is giving playback for Kishore Kumar !
Kishore, wearing a saree prefered to lip sync to Asha's voice rather than sing in his " feminine" voice ( a la Aaake seedhi lagi... his duet with himself )
 





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