Snippets from S P Balasubrahmanyam's life and career

S P Balasubrahmanyam is lovingly called Mani by family and friends.

He was born on 4 June 1946 in Konetampet, in present-day Tamil Nadu, then in Madras state that comprised Andhra and Tamil Nadu regions.

A few years later, around the time of Andhra state formation, his family moved to Nellore.

His father S P Sambamurthy was a musician and a “Harikatha” exponent, who is said to have started the Thyagaraja Samaradhana events in Nellore.

He discontinued his engineering course from the JNTU Anantapuram in Andhra Pradesh.

Though he was interested in music, he said that he became a singer accidentally.

SPB’s first film was Sri Sri Sri Maryada Ramanna (Telugu, 1966).

He won the national award for his songs in the 1979 Telugu musical hit Shankarabharanam. He later won several more national awards for his songs in Telugu, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil movies.

In his career spanning over 50 years, and covering three generations of actors, he sang over 40,0000 songs in sixteen Indian languages including Tulu, Badaga.

He acted in about 50 films in Telugu, Kannada and Tamil even frolicking alongside Prabhu Deva in Kadhalan/Premikudu (1994).

Among the singers, he was especially attached to KJ Yesudas whom he revered as an elder brother.

The illustrious duo sang the popular Singarala pairullona song in the movie Dalapathi (1991) lending their voices for another legendary pair of actors in south cinema – Mammootty and Rajnikanth.

He and his wife had two children – Pallavi and Charan, who is also a singer, film producer. SPB's sibling Sailaja is also a popular singer.

In February this year, he donated his ancestral house in Tipparajuvari Street in Nellore to the Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham for running a Vedic school.

The Padma Bhushan awardee endeared himself further to the Telugu audience with a very popular singing talent show on ETV – Paaduta Teeyaga.