Peerlessness is her Prefix - P. Susheela (Part 2)

      Some good hearted soul had urged P. Susheela, aged 16 then in 1952, to approach Pendyala Nageswara Rao as he was scouting  for fresh voices to embellish his, somewhat fledgling career.  P. Susheela paid heed and had sung Naushad’s  serenely melancholic  “mohE bhool gaye sawariyA” during her auditions which force ejected tears from the Master composer’s eyes . He immediately fixed a recording date for recording the songs for his upcoming “kanne thalli”, in Telugu, “petra thai” in tamil.  So, a simultaneous entry into Tamil Filmdom simply happened !!!  “Padhyams” are a part of the Telugu Culture and where ported to the Telugu filmdom as well.  Padhyams became an integral part of Telugu Film Music and P. Susheela herself  was gifted with the “Gajendra Moksham” padhyam  as her first ever  complete recorded song. This was followed by a duet “Ethukku azhaithAi Ethukku” in Tamil and its Telugu version “enthuku pilichavu enthuku” with AM Raja in the same movie. Pendyala came to swear by P. Susheela for the rest of his career as did several peers of his, across all the South Indian languages. An exacting perfectionist was he, even the simplest of his songs went for numerous takes as every executed version of the song acted as a  stimulant for fresher composing ideas. Ever the smiling assassin, he would gently step into the booth, praise the performers and then punctuate the laudatory statements with a request for a change, on very many occasions, more than a subtle change it could be.  Hence, yet another take !!!!  Within a couple of years. Susheela had stepped into bigger league by being commissioned by “Big Daddy of them all“, Saluru Rajeswara Rao for “Missiamma”, the perennial classic.  Prior to that, P. Susheela’s assignments in the Pendyala album “Donga Ramudu” (released in 1953) had created enough ripples for the music industry to extend its reach to the then 16 year old.  “Donga Ramudu” had a  javli “Bala Gopala” , sung in the traditional classical style,  open throated and all and “Anuragamu virisena”,  a romantic ditty set in the Thumri mode. The latter song is “crooned”,  a technique wherein every sensitivity inducing passage  is sung softly and every piece of technicality is executed within the periphery of softness. Every sangathi, brigha had to be “crooned”, no mean task and one wonders how a 16 year old could bring such a conspicuous change in delivery style across songs when her experience was slender then.  So back to Rajeswara Rao, a few months before the Missiamma project happened, he had requested the seemingly shyness smitten 16 year old who spoke very little to come to Gemini Studios to sing as a part of the chorus.  Swift had been the response and sharp and curt too, taking the maestro by surprise, so sharp that he perished such intentions immediately. The young girl had some spunk you know, she was to later arm herself with a broom stick when her hotel room in Mumbai was on the verge of being invaded by rioters in 1957 !!!! She had gone to Mumbai to record songs for the Tamil version of “Mughal E Azam” for Naushad Ali then. “Missiamma” had the classical “ariya paruvamadA” and the ever titillating “brindavanamum nandakumaranum”.  If the teenaged girl’s earlier mentioned caustic response had created a scar in Rajeswara Rao’s mind, he showed no indications of that  as he swiftly made her his lead singer. Even in the 50s, everything from classical to Club songs and Middle Eastern ditties were mapped to her by this prodigious composer. He was to become so besotted with her singing when he had to seek the services of another singer owing to  P Susheela’s absence, he was found hanging a towel on his head as a mark of protest !!!!