For recordings of film songs, Sujatha would rarely go at the same time that SP Balasubrahmanyam did. She was afraid she might delay the whole process, since she’d need time to get her part right and he will have to repeat his portions all over again. So, whenever the two singers were on stage together, the late SPB would tease her. “Today I got a chance to sing with her. She never allows me to sing with her,” the beloved singer, known for his child-like pranks, would say.
Sujatha, veteran singer who has sung many duets with SPB, talks with reverence of the senior musician who passed away on Friday, after a cardiorespiratory arrest, barely two months after contracting COVID-19.
“He would get it right in the first instance. I might need more time and would not want to delay the process. I say this but every time we are on stage, he would tease me about it,” Sujatha tells TNM, laughing fondly at the memory.
Another time, they were in Los Angeles together for an AR Rahman show. Sujatha was unwell then, coughing and feverish, with what would later be diagnosed as jaundice. But she had to sing on stage and felt anxious, going breathless at times. “I didn’t know it then but when I was singing ‘Netru illatha matram’ (from Puthiya Mugham), he was standing behind me, patting me for support. When I watched it later, I was so touched,” she says.
SPB’s prankster side was once revealed in an interview with Khushbu on her talk show. KS Chithra, another renowned singer who has sung many film songs in multiple languages with SPB, appeared on screen to make a 'complaint'. He had once tricked her when she came to sing a Telugu song in her early days. She was unfamiliar with the language back then and SPB, on the pretext of giving her the lyrics, wrote down the wrong words, which were in fact a jibe on the director of the movie. Poor Chithra was worried when everyone began to laugh as she sang the song. SPB kept a straight face till the director came and asked her, “You had so much anger for me that you have written a song in Telugu to scold me?” That’s when it came out that it was SPB’s doing.
In the interview, he tells Khushbu of the times he’d play pranks on veteran singer S Janaki, pinching her handkerchief which she held tight while singing. She would walk away in protest and sit in her car and he would go and plead with her, asking her autograph till it made her laugh.
The man was all about spreading joy, positivity. In an old stage show when he sang the famous ‘Kaattu Kuyilu’ song from Thalapathy with legendary singer KJ Yesudas, both the artistes could be seen holding each other when they sang lines about brotherhood and love. Ilaiyaraaja, the composer of the piece, joins them at one point driving the audience ecstatic.
Another time, the two singers came together for a programme to commemorate Malayalam composer Devarajan Master. SPB and Yesudas were on stage, speaking about each other. Yesudas spoke of a time in Paris where they had both performed after which they couldn’t have dinner (‘the organisers always forget you after an event is over’). That night, when Yesudas retired to his room to eat an apple and sleep, he heard a voice outside say ‘room service’. When he opened the door, it was SPB, who always carried a little cooker with him and somehow conjured a basic dinner of rice and curd and chutney out of it. “My eyes were full, not because I couldn’t stand the hunger but because of the love he showed, of wanting to give some food to his Anna (Elder brother) first before having some for himself.”
SPB, when his turn came, said that he shouldn’t be called a ‘maha gayaka’ because there was only one maha gayaka and that was Yesudas. He was a good musician but Yesudas was great, SPB said. They both had similar backgrounds, coming from poor families and born to fathers who were artistes.
When SPB passed away, Yesudas, 80 years old now, said that even though they were not born of the same mother, they were both blessed by the mother of music, Saraswathy. Balu was his brother, he said.