Shankar Jaikishan - Musical Collaborators

Musical Collaborators

S-J formed a core team with lyricists Shailendra (himself regarded as perhaps the greatest of his ilk) and Hasrat Jaipuri and with singers Mohammed Rafi and Lata Mangeshkar. SJ had two other lifelong companions who worked as their assistants: Dattaram Wadkar and Sebastian D'Souza, the former supervising their rhythm section and the later writing musical notations for all SJ compositions (during SJ's musical sittings as can be seen in a number of photographs of such sessions) and then rehearsing all the musicians of the grand SJ orchestra according to SJ's compositions and directions. SJ also patronized the immensely talented singer Manna Dey, who sang his best songs with them and used Mukesh's silken voice as playback for Raj Kapoor. Among the directors, they worked most closely with Raj Kapoor and were considered the kingpins of his legendary banner RK Films.

They were commercial geniuses in addition to be wonderfully god-blessed on music. They lead the Bollywood music in spite of tough competition from maestros like Roshan, SD Burman, OP Nayyar and Madanmohan and remained on the top much to the chagrin of very highly talented music directors!

S-J worked with almost all singers of their time. They had a good working relationship with all of them and were masters in extracting the very best from every one of them. They were steady as a team with Hasrat Jaipuri & Shailendra as their lyricists; but after the demise of Shailendra, they worked with a host of other lyricists such as Indeevar, Gulshan Bawra, Neeraj, Verma Malik, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Vithhal Bhai Patel and Rajinder Krishan, to name a few.

S-J were the "house composers" for RK Films and were on their pay-roll till the end. Raj Kapoor used to maintain a music bank where he stored compositions of S-J. Even after the termination of the professional association between Shankar and Raj Kapoor (Jaikishan had died by then), the latter had used a number of S-J's earlier compositions (which were in his custody) for all his films though the credits were given officially to other composers, e.g., Laxmikant Pyarelal (Bobby, Satyam Shivam Sundaram, Prem Rog) and Ravindra Jain (Ram Teri Ganga Maili). S-J also worked with other stars like Shammi Kapoor, Rajendra Kumar, Dev Anand, Sunil Dutt, Kishore Kumar, Manoj Kumar, Biswajeet, Joy Mukherjee, Dharmendra & Manoj Kumar.

Most of S-J's films show Dattaram and Sebastian as their assistants. Dattaram handled the percussion section of the orchestra and composed original beats, and Sebastian handled the rest. Shankar met Dattaram when the latter was a page boy at Prithvi Theatres and stayed with him throughout. As recalled by Dattaram, Sebastian composed the musical background of most of S-J's songs and also conducted the orchestra. Thus S-J were fortunate to have top quality assistants and used their talents well.