Peerlessness is her Prefix - P. Susheela (Part 3)

Come the mid-fifties, 1955 to be precise, the promise that P Susheela’s career carried was actualized. Yet another maestro, Adhepalli Rama Rao was the tool destiny used to further P Susheela’s career.  “kanavaNE kaN kaNda deivam” was the movie wherein the great composer roped in the young singer to sing what eventually became cult classics,  “enthan uLLAm thuLLi viLaiyAduvathum yEno”, the serpent woman’s peals of romance, the depiction of inebriated pining with the “hic” “unnai kaN thEduthE”,  “anbil malarntha nal rOja” the soothing lullaby amidst helpless deprivation, a melodic wonder whose allure increases by the passing minute. Then there was this open hearted scream towards The Mother Divine, “o mAdha vantharuL” and the chirpy duet with P Leela “intha veeN kObam varalAmO”.  The legend had arrived well and truly !!!! Little wonder that the numero uno composer of that era in Tamil, G Ramanathan had wanted her to sing for him and for reasons still nebulous,  P Susheela was giving him the slip.  The great composer finally got her to start singing for him through “ennai pOl peNNallavO”  in “vaNangAmudi” , a song set to Todi in its most expressive splendor, but that too was after Susheela had tried squeezing out with a lame excuse. “I will make you sing if you  don’t, yourself “ the genius of a composer had thundered. Several other songs were awarded to her the same movie and yes, the composer stuck to her until his untimely demise in 1964. “Susheela enrAl Auditorium voice. Sangathi kAlam avangaLa thoda mudiyAthu. Enaku kidaithha miga periya pokkisham”….those were observations made by MS Viswanathan  about P. Susheela on several occasions  .  “Sangathi kAlam”, an interesting coinage used by the path breaking incomparable legend points to the ability of the songstress to roll out rapid gamaks within a short interval span.  MSV’s voice had carried overtones of justification for having chosen Susheela as his first choice lady singer. Rewinding  back to G Ramanathan, the first ever composer in Tamil to compose specifically for the vocals of P Susheela was he. Many of his songs had gamaks laden phrases that exploited the “sangathi kAlam” ability of P Susheela most wonderously.  To quote only a few of those G Ramanathan nuggets with rapid gamaks for P Susheela “Thannai maranthAdum en manam nAdum chandiranE from SarangathAra , enjoy the gamak slides and glides within the charanams and at the pallavi at the word “chandiranE”, “unnazhagai kanniyargaL” from uthhamaputhhiran, the agArams that serve as the prelude are example enough, “kannA manam kallO”  from “kadavuLin kuzhanthai” the phrases that complete the tail end of the charanams are riveting enough.  G Ramanathan, it is said,  would on purpose, sing out the word “kaNdithnAlE”  in the song “unnazhagai kanniyargaL”  in the classical mould and would ask his troupe members to observe how P Susheela would automatically modernize it and give it a polish that resonated with the cinema situation. Her final assignment with the blessed composer was “deivathhin deivam” which marked his effortless foray into “light music” . He could do that too, you know!!!  What perennial classics he had her singing for him in that film “nee illAtha ulagathhilE”, “pattu pAda vAyeduthhAn” and “annamE sornamE”, a lilting duet with S Janaki. Listing the movies that G Ramanathan had Susheela singing for him would be a tiresome exercise, let us simply observe that she sang everything from vampish to classical for the much respected G Ramanathan and had remained his singer of choice since 1957.  A watershed was this year for Susheela in all languages except Malayalam where Shantha Nair and P Leela were still being awarded a  major slice of assignments. The pEsum padam awards for 1957 and 1958 were clearly  reflective of the market position of artistes in Tamil. For 1957, the Best Music Director award went to G Ramanathan for his delicious score in “vaNangAmudi”, TM Sounderarajan bagged the award for the best male singer (for “vaNangamudi”) and P. Susheela was chosen as the best lady singer for “several movies”. Her market presence in both Tamil and Telugu during this phase belittled every other singer’s by the proverbial mile. Every composer of substance plumped for her starting from the already established Rajeswara Rao to the then up and coming Viswanathan-Ramamurthy. Interestingly enough, the “pEsum padam” awards for 1958 had the “Usual Suspects”, G Ramanathan for Sarangathara, TM Sounderarajan for Sarangathara and P Susheela again, for “several movies”.  Now , she didn’t have to wait for too long for a call from God’s Own Country as the veteran V Dakshinamurthy roped her in for “pAttu pAdi  urakkAm” from Seetha in 1959-60 as an entry point in Malayalam movies. He was to follow this up with several more offers for his protégé as far as Malayalam Films were concerned and eventually, one of the most impactful combinations in Malayalam Film Music G Devarajan-P Susheela happened and most enriching was it to be.  G Devarajan like a few others in Malayalam Film Music Industry would compose a tune and place it in abeyance for 2 weeks for the songstress to lend her voice to it.  Similar was the case with M Ranga Rao and Vijayabhaskar in Kannada too.  Call sheet issues you know, Susheela experienced a plethora of Call Sheet issues and that extended into Tamil and Telugu as well!!!

       Such was Susheela’s demand in the South that she had ended up not singing several hundreds of numbers all four languages, especially in Malayalam and Kannada that were composed keeping her mind. The fact that the technology of that era demanded that the song recording be a very protracted process was one of the main reasons. Any mistake by any musician would call for re-commencement of the entire process and inevitably every take would be embellished with amendments to the composition itself.