This article is written by Arunkumar Deshmukh, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a contributor to this blog. This article is meant to be posted in atulsongaday.me. If this article appears in sites like lyricstrans.com and ibollywoodsongs.com etc then it is piracy of the copyright content of atulsongaday.me and is a punishable offence under the existing laws.
Today’s song under discussion is “Bol bol bol bol My little dove” from the film Baap Bete-59. The music Director for this film is Madan Mohan.
MADAN MOHAN. An Unique composer. A thorough Gentleman. Lata Mangeshkar had called him “The King of Ghazal”. He created masterpieces in her voice, which set high standards in films. Madan Mohan, however,could never combine Class with Mass appeal unlike other composers like Naushad, S D Burman or Roshan or Shanker – Jaikishen.
During his initial struggling days in Bombay, he worked as an assistant to S D Burman and Shyamsunder for films made at Filmistan, where his father Rai Bahadur Chunilal was a Partner. He never took undue advantage of his father’s position and created his own space with hard work. His first film “Aankhen”(1950) was without a song of Lata- who became his Lead singer later, making some of his creations all-time greats. They made a great Team together.
Madan Mohan also used Rafi and Talat to great advantage. He was known to create songs as per the situations in the film. Madan Mohan considered C.Ramchandra as his Mentor and Idol. Although a Punjabi, Madan Mohan’s music rarely reflected the “Punjabi style” of O P Nayyar or other Punjabi composers. The Punjab school of music gave many everlasting melodies, but Madan Mohan was different. He truly was an ‘Artistic Aristocrat’. His music was of a different class altogether.
He gave music in 91 films + Veer Zaara in 2004, which was made with his tunes. His genius work, unfortunately did not have the backing of lady Luck. In spite of doing all the good work, he never won any Film fare award. He became more famous after he was gone.
Just one example is enough to show how good luck eluded him from the beginning. After working for 6 years in films,his first film to become a Hit was “Bhai Bhai”-56. It ran for 24 weeks and then there was a dispute between the producer and the Distributor. The result was- The film “Bhai Bhai” was removed from theatres in the 24th week and it missed the Silver Jubilee by a whisker !
He had to wait for another 8 more years for his next Silver Jubilee Hit “Woh kaun thhi “-64…14 years after he had made a beginning ! He was nominated for Filmfare awards many times, but did not get it even once. None of his songs, nor Male singers, nor Female singers nor even any Lyricist got any award for his film music.
Nevertheless Madan Mohan always gave his best in his assignments. He gave music to 2 Raj Kapoor films and 3 Dev Anand films, but no film of Dilip Kumar. And Dilip was his family friend ! Madan Mohan gave Playback in four films, Aankhen-50, Shabistan-51, Dhun-53 and Fifty-Fifty-56.
Lata Mangeshkar sang 210 songs for him in 68 films. Out of this 168 were solos. His total songs in 91 films were 684 songs. Madan Mohan planned his songs in the films in such a way that his Heroines got justice in the songs. In the film Bhai-Bhai-56, there were three Heroines. Madan Mohan gave one Hit song to each one. Nimmi got ‘kadar jaane naa’. Nirupa Roy sang ‘mera chhota sa dekho ye sansar hai’. and Shyama sang ‘aye dil mujhe bata de’.
Similarly, in the film ‘Dekh kabira roya’-57, there were three good songs for the three Heroines and what’s more all these songs came one after another in the film serially. Ameeta sang, ‘Meri veena tum bin roye’, Anita Guha got ,’ashkon se teri hum ne’, and Shubha Khote sang,’Tu pyar karen ya thukarayen’.
In the film Chandan-58, he did something different. One song, “ye khule khule se gesoo” was filmed on 3 different Heroines, but each Heroine got a different Antara tune in the same song. Thus Nutan, Shyama and Mala Sinha got equal weightage in the song picturisation.
While Madan Mohan was known as an original composer,at times, he showed that he too had feet of clay ! To my knowledge,there were at least 4 songs from Madan Mohan which were not his own tunes.
S No.
Name of movie (year)
Song
Singer
Copied from
1
Mem Sahib (1956)
dil dil se milakar dekho
Kishore Kumar
Frank Sinatra’s “The isle of Capri”
2
Aakhri Daaon(1958)
Tujhe kya sunaun mai dilruba
Rafi
Copied from Sajjad Hussain’s “ye hawa ye raat ye chandni” from film Sangdil-52
3
Pooja Ke Phool (1964)
Meow meow meri sakhi
Lata
originally sung in Tamil by M S Rajeshwari (meow meow Punnakutti) in the film ‘Kumudam’-62.
Then its Telugu version was sung by S.Janaki( oho oho paurama) in the film ‘Manchi manusulu’-63.
4
Baap Bete (1959)
Bol Bol my little love- the song under discussion
Rafi
blatant copy of the famous Paul Enka song “Diana”. This same tune was later copied by Usha Khanna too as “Kaun ye aaya mehfil mein” in the film “Dil deke Dekho”-59
This does not in anyway lowers the standing of Madan Mohan in HFM. All other composers too did something like this in their songs. Moreover the number of original songs of Madan Mohan far outnumber these inspirations. Madan Mohan is remembered for his superb Ghazals and sweet melodious Lata numbers. These compositions are enough to make his immortal in the annals of HFM history.
Song-Bol bol bol bol my little dove (Baap Bete)(1959) Singer-Rafi, Lyrics-Rajinder Krishan, MD-Madan Mohan
Lyrics
aa haa
o ho
bol bol bol bol
my little dove
dil mera poochhta hai
whom do you love
mujhse jo pyar hai to then please tell
baajegi kis din wedding bell
please tell me Sheela
haaye
ghul mil ghul mil
ghul bhi ja
sharm na kar ab
khul bhi ja
ghul mil ghul mil
ghul bhi ja
sharm na kar ab
khul bhi ja
marzi jo hai teri
kehde haan
saaf saaf warna kehde na
aa aa
aa aa
aa
aa
aa
aa
bol bol bol bol
my little dove
dil mera poochhta hai
whom do you love
mujhse jo pyaar hai to then please tell
baajegi kis din wedding bell
please tell me Sheela
haaye
gumsum gumsum kyun khadi
soch hai tujhko kya padi
gumsum gumsum kyun khadi
soch hai tujhko kya padi
Laaya hoon ik dil le na le
munh se yes yaa no to de
o bol bol bol bol
my little dove
dil mera poochta hai whom do you love
mujhse jo pyaar hai to then please tell
baajegi kis din wedding bell
Please tell me Sheela
haaye
tujhko bhi mujh sa naujawaan
mil na sakega meharbaan
tujhko bhi mujh sa naujawaan
mil na sakega meharbaan
aur na koi mujhe phaans le ae
achcha hai tu hi chance le
lala
lala
lalalala
bol bol bol bol my little dove
dil mera poochhta hai whom do you love
Mujhse jo pyaar hai to tell please tell
Bajegi kis din wedding bell
Please please
ho please
tell me Sheela
