MS Viswanathan’s music journey began in Kovai

Coimbatore: As the music legend, MSV, made his last journey, Coimbatore historians fondly remember that the maestro’s musical journey began in this cotton city over seven decades ago.

MSV who hailed from Elapully hamlet near Palakkad, MSV, came to Coimbatore as a little boy in the early 1940s as an errand boy supplying tea and coffee for artistes at the Jupiter Pictures established by two businessmen Somasundaram and SK Mohideen in Kovai.

The Jupiter Pictures which owned the Central Studio was then situated near the Rajalakshmi Mills on Trichy Road. It was in the portals of the Jupiter Pictures that MSV got associated with music composer S M. Subbiah Naidu, the head of music department at Jupiter Pictures.

Subbiah saw huge talent in the boy and exposed him to the world of music. Rajesh Govindarajulu, former governing council member of INTACH and a film historian told DC that MSV had also been visiting the Patchiraja Studio located at Puliyakulam.

However the Jupiter Picture owners decided to shift their company to Madras, as they felt that running film studios in Coimbatore was turning out to be a costly affair. When they downsized, MSV was sacked.

But S. M. Subbiah Naidu was adamant and retained his assistant who carried his harmonium. It was only later that Jupiter Somu came to know that MSV had assisted in composition of several songs for SM Subbiah.

Making his maiden stage performance at the age of 13, MSV rose to dizzying heights to score over 1200 songs in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi. He individually set the background score for 500 films.

Rajesh Govindarajulu, citing a book on Jupiter Pictures authored by M. Habibullah, the son of the founder of Jupiter Pictures S.K. Mohideen, states that MS V aspired to become an actor and a playback singer but had played harmonium in a musical troupe of Subburaman, a music composer, where T.K. Ramamoorthy joined as a percussionist.

Following Subburaman’s sudden demise, both MSV and TK Ramamoorthy completed the films that were left half-finished.

The duo started their journey from the film Panam and went on till Aayirathil Oruvan where they had scored over 700 films together giving some of the best melodies popular even now among the present generation. MSV became ‘Mellisai Mannar’ that was conferred by Sivaji Ganesan at Triplicane Cultural Academy in 1963.

And it was Jayalalithaa, who conferred Thirai Isai Chakravarthy (The Emperor of Cine Music) title on him in August 2012 and presented him with 60 gold coins and a brand new car as token of his contribution to filmdom.