I think I skipped this last year? Anyway, I am remembering it this year! A very very important birthday.
For his birthday, I will give you 55 reasons to love him (mostly songs) (this is an updated and reposted post)
1.1. He was one of the first composers to be raised in film music. His father, SD Burman, was not only a brilliant classically trained musician, he was also a film musician. And he passed on to his son both the classical training and the familiarity with film requirements.
2. His nickname “Pancham” was a sign of how music and film both followed him from birth. there are 3 versions to it. The first is that he cried in tune with the 5th note on the Indian scale, “Pa”. The second is that he cried in all of the first 5 notes. And the third is that Ashok Kumar, the first star of Indian film, gave him the name.
3. RD helped his father with the soundtrack of Pyaasa. Bringing together the brilliance of Sudhir Ludhianvi, Guru Dutt, and RD Burman for one shining moment.
4. RD received training from his father at home, and from 3 separate musical masters in Bombay. As a child, he was already working in his father’s film orchestra, along with continuing his studies with his other masters.
5. RD received his first commission as a solo music director at age 20.
6. Let’s look at some of SD’s greatest work, to get a sense of the family RD was coming from. This is the lullaby that Karan Johar just tweeted recently he sings to his children every night.
7. That’s a happy one, but a lot of SD’s greatest songs are more emotional than that.
8. Although he could be bouncy and happy too!
9. And romantic!
10. Very good with the sad longing songs too
11. And that staple of Indian film, the “I am a carefree young man” hero introduction song.
12. Finally, the song RD wrote which his father used in the film he was working on.
13. As a young man, RD continued working with his father, now as an official “assistant music director” on films like Guide.
14. And the insanely catchy Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi.
15. RD was offered his first film at 20, but it ended up being shelved. His first film finally came out when he was 22, Chote Nawab, a comedy with Mehmood.
16. Chote Nawab came about not because RD had all that experience as an assistant, but because Mehmood came to meet his father in order to hire him, and noticed RD playing the tabla in the corner, and his talent was so obvious, that once SD said no, he hired RD immediately.
17. RD still didn’t have regular work even after Chote Nawab, no full films until Bhoot Bangla came out 4 years later, another Mehmood film, confirming their friendship and artistic partnership.
18. It was the movie after Bhoot Bangla which first confirmed RD as something special, Teesri Manzil, which took the rock and roll inspired sounds of the 1960s teen romances and made them something a little different, a little better.
19. Teesri Manzil is also where RD worked for the first time with the singer who would become the “voice” of his songs, Asha Bhosle. Asha, who he would later marry.
20. The 50s were where RD grew up and was trained. The 60s were where he first started working, but the 70s were when he came to rule the decade.
21. Bhoot Bangla!!!
22. Teesri Manzil! Such a good movie in every way, but the songs are really something special.
23. Another one! So you can see Helen, Shammi Kapoor, and RD Burman all coming together.
24. But like I said, it was really the 70s where he came into his own. In songs like this one, which is so popular to this day that it was just remixed for Noor.
25. Or this one, which inspired the title for a whole movie, plus a remix within that movie.
26. He could do fun peppy songs, but also just plain lyrical songs.
27. This is one of my favorite of the more lyrical side of things.
28. But mostly he became famous for how he took the new rock sounds, and new electronic instruments available to him and invented a new film sound.
29. Another one, which should be familiar from all the many many samples and remixes.
30. This is also when RD started singing his own songs sometimes, enjoying the sound of his rough voice against the music. Like in this one, which is purely instrumental besides his voice providing the refrain “Mehbooba”.
31. RD was a fully successful man by this point, and as most successful men did, he got married. To a young woman who was a fan of his music, who he met in the resort town of Darjeeling. She had bet her friends she could convince him to take her on a movie date.
32. The romance was like something from one of his movies, but of course life isn’t like the movies. 5 years later, they were divorced. He was 32.
33. Through out this time, RD continued to work with Asha Bhosle. Asha was divorced, and 6 years older than him. It took him years to convince her, but eventually they were married. She was 47, he was 41.
34. RD and Asha toured together, and through out the early 80s he was still the king of film. But time went on, and new “Disco” style composers came to be popular.
35. His last film, 1942: A Love Story, returned him to popularity, winning him a FilmFare award. But it was too late, he had died before it came out, at only 55.
36. But, in 55 years, he had managed to forever change the film industry!
37. Working with every star from Shammi to Rajesh Khanna
38. Every catchy tune you hum, it’s an RD Burman song.
39. He worked with generations of actors, Sanjay Dutt.
40. And Sunil Dutt.
41. His last film, it didn’t win FilmFare’s just out of sentiment, even at 55 he still had a melody no one could match.
42. And he found new twists on things he had done dozens of times before, like the heroine in love song.
43. The rain song
44. And of course the love song.
45. But the real mark of RD’s popularity is how his songs are still used today, remixed over and over again. “Gulabi Aankhen”
46. “Dum Maro Dum”
47. “Raftaarein” constantly
48. And again!
49. Not just in films either, popular musicians will use his work too.
50. There’s even films like Dil Vil Pyar Var which are almost entirely Burman remixes
51. His songs have traveled the world, played as far away as Europe.
52. Jhankaar Beats, one of my favorite movies, is almost entirely about RD Burman songs, culminating in this live performance of a remix.
53. And stopping in the middle to give us his entire life story in song.
54. There’s a reason RD is still revered, look at this medley, song after song, each one a classic.
55. Let’s let RD himself end this.
dontcallitbollywood 
Aaja Aaja is so good! Not just the song but the choreography and camera work and staging. On a nuts and bolts level it’s so well put together, I love it.
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Teesri Manzil is such a good movie! All of it is well put together. It’s a twisted thriller, so the camera has to do a lot of work with only showing us things around corners or through a shadow or at a slanted angle.
On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 10:14 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Yay! My favorite Hindi films music director of all time.
“RD composed his first song at 9 years old, his father used it in the soundtrack of Pyaasa.”
This can’t be true. Pyaasa came out in 1957, when RDB would have been 18, not 9. Also, I think “aye meri topi palat ke aa” from Funtoosh a year earlier is generally regarded as RD’s first contribution to his Dad’s music.
“Teesri Manzil is also where RD worked for the first time with the two singers who would become the “voice” of his songs, Kishore Kumar and Asha Bhosle.”
There is no Kishore in “Teesri Manzil”, Mohd. Rafi was the male playback singer. RD worked with Kishore for the first time a year earlier in Bhoot Bangla.
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Thank you! I am so bad at music stuff, I really need help with the research. I’ll update the post.
And thanks for commenting! Poor RD, not many people are celebrating his birthday here.
On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 1:17 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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In the early 1960s, my dad was a post grad lecturer at IIT Bombay, waiting at a bus stop, to catch his bus to work. (Prior to that, he had been part of the inaugural masters class of IIT Bombay). He was passionate about electronics, aerospace, Hindi films, Indian classical and film music, Indian history & mythology, and all forms of Indian sports, in that order.
So he still remembers that he caught, out of the corner of his eye, Asha Bhosle and RD Burman kissing in the park across the street as he waited for his bus. 😀
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AAAA! That’s so cute!
Also, if your Dad stayed at IIT Bombay, I know someone who was a professor there in the 80s. Which proves my theory that even on the internet, all Desi people are only 3 degrees removed.
On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 6:23 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Wow! What a story 😲
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If your friend was an IITB prof in the ’80s, then he might have been my dad’s student in the ’60s if he/she was a student of physics, electrical, or aerospace.
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Also, the Mangeshkar sisters were ethnically/ancestrally Goans, as were many behind the scenes people in the Hindi film industry back then, so that would add to the fact that he noticed the kissing (I.e. we are Goans too, and there are only ~2 million of us on the planet, including the diaspora).
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Nope, went to U of I instead (Go Illini!). Which is probably one of the few places you can get a comparable engineering education to IIT Bombay.
On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 6:59 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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