Geeta Dutt - Musical Association with Various Composers

(1930 - 1972)

C Ramchandra

Ramchandra Narhar Chitalkar (1918-1982) was a renowned music composer in the Hindi Film industry. In the composer's role, he mostly used the name C. Ramachandra. For his career as an occasional playback singer he used only his surname Chitalkar. Chitalkar sang some renowned and unforgettable duets with Lata such as "Kitna Haseen Hai Mausam" in film Azad or "Shola Jo Bhadke" in Albela. He was a dashing extrovert character who lived his life fully. He began his career as a music director in 1942, and that makes him one of the senior most music directors of the Hindi Film music, who went on to have a long and successful career till late fifties. C Ramchandra created a huge number of all time great songs and composed music for over 100 hindi films. The biggest patriotic song of all time- "Aye mere watan ke logon" was his creation.

Geeta Dutt sang around 20 songs for C Ramchandra, mostly during the period of 1947-1953. Most of these songs are duets or group songs. For Sajan (1947) she has sung three trio songs which have vintage flavor. The same year she sings a soulful solo “Oh raja mohe apni bana le re” for the film Agha-Leela Mishra starrer Leela.

In 1949, she sang duets with Lata Mangeshkar and C Ramchandra himself for films like Roshni, Sipahiya and Sanwaria. “Chalo ghunghat mein guiyaan chhupa ke” has the rustic rural touch. For Saqi (1952) she joins the composer (C. Ramchandra himself singing under the name “Chitalkar”) for a light hearted duet “Oh haseena sambhal sambhal ke chal, pad naa jaaye kamar mein bal”. This is one of the known songs of Geeta Dutt sung under the baton of C. Ramchandra. For Shagufa (1953), she gets to sing a solo “Dil ko bachana raja” along with the chorus.

In 1953, C. Ramchandra composed the musical score for the film Anarkali starring Pradeep Kumar and Bina Rai. This is considered to be one of his best albums (other obvious choices are Albela, Aazad and Sargam). The music of this film was initially composed by Basant Prakash, the younger brother of composer Khemchand Prakash. He even composed a song “Aa jaane wafa aa” penned by Jan Nisar Akhtar and sung by Geeta Dutt. Basant Prakash had major health problems after having recorded this one song with Geeta Dutt. C. Ramchandra took over as the composer and insisted not only that all songs be sung by hisfavorite singer Lata Mangeshkar but that the Geeta Dutt number be removed from the film. Although the Filmistan people agreed, the Geeta song stayed in the movie.

Another version of the story is as follows: It had always known that "Anarkali" had two music directors, Basant Prakash and C. Ramachandra, but did not know much else. The story apparently is that the original choice for music director was indeed C. Ramachandra, with the added caveat that he ought to use Geeta Dutt as the main singer since she was riding high in terms of popularity at the time (possibly soon after the musical success of "Baavre Nain", although this is just a guess). C.Ramchandra who was a Lata devotee refused to agree and the producer asked Basant Prakash to enter the fray. He recorded one song i.e. the Geeta solo "Aa jaan-e-vafa aa". However either due to some disagreement or ill health, he too was replaced, this time by Hemant Kumar who apparently composed the music for at least two songs. Now the two songs were not mentioned explicitly, but it would make sense that they were the two songs that Hemant Kumar himself sings. It seems that by now, they producer had agreed to Lata singing for the film. However, for some reason, Hemant did not work out either and they went back to C. Ramachandra was kind of destined for this film. The end results of course are the classics "Yeh zindagi usi ki hai", "Zamaane ne samjha ke ham peeke aaye", etc.

Even after fall-out with Lata Mangeshkar later, C. Ramchandra preferred the younger sister Asha Bhonsle for his songs in the films like Navrang and Paigham over the senior singer Geeta Dutt with whom he had worked earlier.

List of songs sung by Geeta Dutt

Please note that this list may not be complete

Year	Song	Film	Co-Singer
1947	Hum banjare	Saajan	Mohd Rafi, Lalita Deolkar, S D Gupta
1947	Sambhal sambhal ke jaiyyo	Saajan	Mohd Rafi, Lalita Deolkar
1947	Abhi khake thokar sambhalne	Saajan	Mohd Rafi, Lalita Deolkar
1947	Oh raaja re mohe apni bana	Leela	-
1947	Kya isi ka naam hai preet	Leela	Binapani Mukherjee
1949	Pehan chunariya kaali	Roshni	Chitalkar
1949	Chalo Ghunghat Mein	Sipahiya	Lata Mangeshkar
1949	Jaani re ham jaani re	Sanwaria	Lata Mangeshkar
1951	Ham hain tere deewaane	Shabistan	Talat Mehmood
1951	Hai Ye Mausam E Bahaar	Shabistan	Talat Mehmood
1952	Mujhe apna bana	Ghunghroo	Lata Mangeshkar
1952	Oh haseena sambhal sambhal	Saqi	Chitalkar
1953	Maine laakhon ke bol	Shagufa	Sunder
1953	Dil Ko Bachana Raja	Shagufa	-

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