The Micro View of The Best Songs of 1950 @ Songs of Yore – Summing Up – II: Duet Songs and The Best Music Director

We now conclude our micro-view of songs of a particular year – Best songs of 1950: And the winners are?. We have covered up documentation of the further micro-review of the songs C Ramchandra, Husnlal Bhagatram and Ghulam Mohammad, Anil Biswas and other Music directors’ Lata Mangeshakar’s songs, as well as those of Suraiya and Shamshad Begum in June 2015 and Rajkumari, Geeta Roy and Other female Singers in July 2015.. We had then continued to explore Male Solo Songs of Mukesh, Talat Mahamood, Mohammad Rafi, G M Durrani and Chitalkar, Manna Dey, Arun Kumar, Manmohan Krishna and Others too in July 2015. During August 2015, we had Other playback singers for Raj Kapoor and Male-Female duets of Mukesh, Mohammad Rafi, Talat Mahmood, G M Durani and Those of Chitalkar and Other Male Singers for our micro-review. In the concluding month of September, we completed micro-review of Triads / Triads+ too.

Having covered all the facets – Female Solos, Male Solos, Male-Female / Male-Male/Female-Female Duets and Triads /Triads + – in individual details from micro-view of ‘Best songs of 1950: And the winners are?, I presented MY choice of the TOP 10 songs in Female Solos as well those in Male Solos in the previous episode.

Summing Up – Duets

The last category in the songs section was Duets. We had extensively covered the most happening category of Male-Female Duet Songs as well relatively very selectively used category of Female-Female Duets and Male-Male Duets.

In the Male-Female Duets we had listened to 52 songs in all. These can be viewed wither from Male-Female duets angle or from Female-Male Duets angle. From the Male-Female angle, the duets of Mohammad Rafi (21), Mukesh (13), Talat Mahmood (7) and G M Durrani (6) total 37 songs. In the mirror, from Female-Male duets angle, this works out to 13 duets of Shamshad Begum, 11 of Lata Mangeshkar, 9 Geeta Roy, 5 of Suraiya and 3 each of Raj Kumari and Zohrabai Ambalewali – 44.

Here are My Favorite Male-Female Duets, in no particular order.:

Mukesh + Lata Mangeshkar – Zamaane ka dastoor hai yeh purana – Lajwaab – Prem Dhawan- Anil Biswas

Mukesh + Geeta Roy – Khayalon Men Kisi Ke Is Tarah Aaya Nahin Karte– Baware Nayan – Kedar Sharma – Roshan

Mukesh + Raj Kumari – Mujhe Sach Sach Bata – Baware Nayan – Kedar Sharma – Roshan

Mohammad Rafi + Lata Mangeshkar– Mahi O dupata mora de de – Meena Bazaar – Qamar Jalalabadi – Music Husnlal-Bhaatram

Mohammad Rafi + Suraiya – Dil Ko Hae Dil Ko ..Teri Tasveer Se Bahalae Hue Hain – Dastaan – Shakeel Badayuni – Naushad

Talat Mahmood + Lata Mangeshkar – Yaad aanewale phir yaad aa rahe hain – Anmol Ratan – DN Madhok- Vinod

Talat Mahmood + Shamshad Begum – Milte hi aankhen dil hua deewana kisi ka – Babul – Shakeel Badayuni – Naushad

G M Durrani + Pramodini Desai – Chiraiya Udi Jaye Re ….. Dodo Dodo Babu – Dilruba – – Gyan Dutt

Madan Mohan + Shmamshad Begum – Humse na dil ko lagana musafir – Aankhen – Bharat Vyas – Madan Mohan

And the icing on the cake is:

Hemant Kumar and Roma Devi (?) –Milte hi ankhen dil hua – cover version

Male-male duets were good to listen to after these many years. But the real evergreen duets do belong to Female – Female duets category..

Here are my favorites:

Shamshad Begum + Lata Mangeshkar – Kisi ke dil mein rahna tha – Babul – Shakeel Badayuni – Naushad

Geeta Roy + Suraiya – Preet ka nata jodnewale – Afsar – Narendra Sharma – S D Burman

Lata Mangeshkar and Amirbai Karnataki – Gore gore O baanke chore – Samadhi – Rajendra Krishna – C Ramchandra

Lata Mangeshkar and Sarswati Rane – Jab dil ko sataye gham tu chhed sakhi sargam – Sargam – PL Santoshi – C Ramchandra

Lata Mangeshkar and Saraswati Rane – Tinak tin tani do din ki zindagani – Sargam – PL Santoshi – C Ramchandra

1950 would certainly go as a very special year in the history of HFM in so far as the specific variety of Triads and Triads + goes. There would be very few, if any, years which may have so varied a crop of triads and triads + songs.

Here are My Favorite Triads and Triads

Mohammad Rafi + Shamshad Begum + Talat Mahmood + Chorus – Nadiya mein utha hai shor – Babul – Shakeel Badayuni – Naushad –

Mukesh + S D Batish, Shamshad Begum + Chorus – Jaao Sidharo He Raadha Ke Shyam – Arzoo – Jan Nissar Akhtar – Anil Biswas

Best Music Director

The year 1950 has presented a very interesting picture in so far as music directors are concerned.

There are MANY music directors at the very Bottom of the Pyramid who have hardly made any impact by their creations. Then a level above, are A FEW music directors, like Husnlal Bhagatram, Hansraj Behl, Ghulam Mohammad, Vasant Desai, Vinod, Madan Mohan, Snehal Bhatkar, who have had from one to several films, a song here or a song there that did attract fair amount of public and critic attention.

A rung above them are music directors like Roshan (Bawre Nain), S D Burman (Afsar), Anil Biswas (Arzoo, Beqasoor) who did not have many films in the year but did have at least one film that not only attained Great Success in those days, but went on to become ever-green as well.

At the top are C Ramchandra (Nirala, Samadhi, Sangeeta, Saragam, Sangram),  Naushad (Dastan, Babul) and Bulo C Rani (Jogan). Each of their films was a great musical success, several of the songs form each film went on to write their own records of commercial success as well as wen on to become evergreens as well.

So one may choose, as per own individual preference, either Baware Nain or Afsana or Dastan or Babul or Arzoo as the Film that had Best Music, but the C Ramachandra is MY CHOICE as the Best Music Director for the year. He has successfully crafted the music, as much for the class as that for the mass, in all the films, even when the films were primarily meant for the mass.

 

Concluded….

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