Star Profiles
Satyam was born in Ganavaram village near Parvathipuram of Vizianagaram district. His grandfather, Sree Chellapilla Satyanarayana, was a famous harikathaa bhaagavataar. He put a five-year old Satyam in music classes where the latter got his fundamentals, until Satyam later joined the tutelage of Sree Patrayani Seetharama Sastry (who was also the guru for the legendary singer Sree Ghantasala, and is the father of Sree P. Sangeetha Rao) in Saluru. Seeing his interest towards music, Sree Penupatruni Krishnayya (music director Adinarayana Rao's father) sent him to Kakinada to join the Young Men Happy Club. After Adinarayana Rao and Anjali Devi got married, Satyam started living in their house. When Anjali Devi moved to Madras after she got a chance to act in films, Satyam went back to his village. By then, he met Indukuri Ramakrishnam Raju (later known as "Rajashri") and worked with him on stage dramas for some time. However, he was still not happy with that, wrote exams to became a karaNam and became the karaNam of his village for a while. His mind was still in Madras, though! Adinarayana Rao started Ashwini Pictures in 1949 with A.N.R.'s partnership. They planned to produce the film Maayalamaari and asked Satyam to come to Madras and look after the production. The film was released in 1951 and also marked Satyam's debut as a chorus singer. T.V. Raju was an Assistant Music Director for this film, and he graduated to become a music director, Satyam joined him as assistant. He became quite popular then on as 'Dholak' Satyam. He worked with T.V. Raju for eight years, mainly for most of the films produced on N.T.R's N.A.T banner, such as Jayasimha, Paanduranga Maahaatmyam, and so on. Satyam got his first break with the Kannada film Sree Ramanjaneya Yuddham, produced by Nayak (late actress Chandrakala's father and a big distributor then). Most Kannada films back then ran for four to six weeks at the most, but Nayak's Onde Balliya Hoogalu that released on Jan. 26, 1967 was a huge superhit and was remade in Telugu as Aadapaduchu. ( Onde Balliya Hoogalu also marked Md. Rafi's debut in Kannada.) Satyam held a record of working for 40 Kannada films in two years! Satyam's famous Kannada hit films include Bhale Bhaskara, Gandhinagara, Kaasidre Kailaasa, Lakshaadheeshwara, Muyyige Muyyi, Onde Balliya Hoogalu, Sree Raamaanjaneya Yuddha, Sarvamangala, Sati Sakkubai.
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Satyam not only did "masala" songs but also gave some evergreen melody hits like kurisindi vaana..., amma annadi oka kammani maaTa..., or E divilO virisina paarijaatamO... (The same tune was used for the song nee mooDida... in the film Gandhinagara, sung by P.B. Sreenivos and P. Susheela.) Satyam never used to agree that he used to copy music, though some said that! He only said that every song is based on something and he sometimes adapts songs to suit Telugu audience. ( galagala paarutunna gOdaarilaa... from Krishna-starrer Gowri, which was recently remixed in Mahesh Babu's Pokiri, was taken from Jose Feliciano's song Listen to the Falling Rain. Even the very popular kurisindi vaana..., which is also again used as sirimalle vaana paDutOndi lOna... in the recent film Vaana, was a clever adaptation of khaayii hai rE ham nE khasam... from the 1969 Hindi film Talaash. Similar is the case with Ghantasala's duet with S. Janaki sa sa sa sarE... from his Telugu debut film Savathi Koduku, which was based on sa sa sa sarE by Kishore Kumar and Asha Bhonsle from the film Naughty Boy. Ghantasala's solo from the same film ee dESam aandhrula dESamuraa... was based on Rafi-Balbir's song yah dES hai veer... from nayaa daur. Satyam was one of the few music directors who worked with both Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhonsle. When Satyam was working for Adinarayana Rao, he was fortunate to meet Lata ji and overlook her rehearsal of the Hindi version of haayihaayigaa aamani saage..., kuhU kuhU bOle kOyaliyaan..., for the Hindi version of Suvarna Sundari. Asha Bhonsle, who knew of this incident, sang readily for Satyam when he approached her for a song in Paalu-Neellu - she even did not take any remuneration out of her respect towards Satyam! She always made a point to visit Satyam's house whenever she came to Madras! With the entry of Chakravarthy, Satyam slowly faded into the background. Rajasekhar-starrer Ankusham in 1989 was one of his last films. He is considered one of the top music directors not only in Telugu but also in Kannada in 1970s. Though he left the physical world on January 11, 1989, his music will be there forever! May his soul rest in peace.
Photos Courtesy : Pulagam Chinanarayana and Srinivas Rao Chimata © Copyright by Telugucinema.com
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