THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In the 1970s, Sabu Thomas, an eighth standard boy passionately bought an HMV gramophone record player to listen to his favourite singer K J Yesudas’s mellifluous rendering. But the money he had was not sufficient enough to buy a record disc. Finally, he managed one from his friend, that played ‘Mazha thulli thulli’ of the movie ‘Saritha’ in several fits and starts. Years rolled by, that boy, who is a nursery school teacher at present has a vast collection of the legendary Malayalam playback singer’s voice caught in cassettes, CDs and gramophone records neatly kept inside the cupboards in his home near Vilavoorkkal. Starting from the ‘Jathibhedam matha dwesham’, his first recording for the movie ‘Kalpadukal’ on November 14, 1961, that enters its golden jubilee on Monday, songs of the blessed singer are aplenty in the rich musical reservoir of Sabu Thomas. Even he is not sure of the exact number of pieces in his collection. “All I know is that none of them have gone missing as I strictly keep them inside the cupboards at my home,” he says. One of the striking features of his collection is a set of songs sung by Yesudas for various films which were not released. Sabu remembers one such endeavour he made in acquiring a copy of them. “For the three songs of a movie ‘Tansen’ in Hindi, I stayed two days in Ernakulam just to get those songs.” He challenges that the exact versions, that were sung by Yesudas for the movie, could not be provided by any websites at present. As soon he finished the sentence, ‘Shadajne Paya’ in the dulcet voice of the great singer, started playing, followed by ‘Akhiyon se piya’ and ‘Sani mere geetho ki’; set to tune by Ravindra Jain. A jingle by K J Yesudas for the advertisement of National Savings Scheme ‘Pathu kassu maatti vaykkadi muthupathumma’ stands out for its rarity. Sabu has burned the midnight’s oil to get the complete version of some songs in the gramophone record as they were cut short to adjust the disc space. He explains the process in detail. “In Doordarshan, there used to be screening of films of the 60s and 70s at 10.30 at night. Then, I sat back with the recorder and switched it on when the song sequences appeared.” Apart from these, he has a collection of songs composed by Yesudas. The first songs he had sung for films in Telugu, Tamil and Hindi also come under the fold. Also, he has classified songs that bagged the state award for the singer from the ‘Ponthinkal Kala’ in 1969 to ‘Swantham Swantham Balyathiloode’ in 2009. A large database on the life and career of the singer also finds space amid the collection.It seems no stone was left unturned as Sabu Thomas has collected every work of Yesudas, be it film song, album, classical music, light music or devotional song. In order to play the songs on gramophone discs, he has bought a turn table player of Denon from Bangalore.When asked what he would like to do with all these in future he says, “I have no plans of commercialising the entire stuff. They should be heard instead of being stored.”
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