KVM, known as Mama in the Telugu film music circles, made SPB sing, 'ravamma mahalakshmi raavamma'.
SPB's cousin, K.Vishwanath, directed the movie, 'Undamma Bottu Pedatha'. The song that became extremely famous that year was not by Sathyam but by K V Mahadevan. Sathyam would become a good friend of his as he was the youngest among those music directors. In 1968 he sang for K V Mahadevan, Sathyam and S. The hero here is Chandramohan, an upcoming actor then.Īt this time, music directors other than S P Kodandapani started giving SPB a chance to sing under their baton. Here you can hear that he is not yet ready to let himself go. If he were to sing this song later, he would have sung it with more energy and more emotion. S P Kodandapani gave him the song, 'medante meda kadhu' in 'Sukha Dukkalu' (Telugu version of the Tamil movie, 'Major Chandrakanth') He was getting to sing for upcoming heroes and comedians. Around this time he took a decision not to pursue his studies and to concentrate on singing in films. He sang for another film which was dubbed from Tamil that year. (The other singers in the song include P.Susheela, P B Srinivas and Eelapata Raghuramaiyya) It was probably because it was his first song and either SPB or the music director felt that he must sound closer to Ghantasala. The typical SPB voice is missing in this song. To me it sounded more like a combination of Ghantasala and P B Srinivas. It is quite difficult to make out that it is SPB. In this song, the male voice you hear is that of SPB. First listen to this song and then read further S P Kodandapani kept his word and in the year 1967 SPB recorded his first song for the movie, 'Sri Sri Maryada Ramanna". SPB was skeptical since he didn't know who Kodandapani was. Having heard him sing in some function, S P Kodadandapani approached SPB and told him that he would give him a chance to sing in films.
SPB started his career singing for S P Kodandapani.
It was a formidable challenge that SPB had to overcome. Ghatntasala was well trained in classical music while SPB was a self taught singer and did not have any formal education. He had a 'soft' voice, a voice that was closer in tone to P B Srinivasa than to Ghantasala. His voice was in direct contrast to Ghantasala's voice. As I had mentioned, SPB had to be sing in such a way that people who were so used to Ghantasala's voice would accept his voice as well. In Part 1, we saw about the legend called Ghantasala who dominated the Telugu film industry.