Raj kapoor preffered Mukesh in all his songs, He was the body,Mukesh the soul. fact is that mukesh did not want a full monopoly on raj kapoor,and afcourse mukesh is not a classical singer, but he did not wanted to be a classical singer, Lata said in a interview :Mukesh bhaiya never sang classical songs,but i knew he could he just never tried’. and so mukesh passes songs offerd to him to Manna dey or Rafi sahab!or the music director prefferd a singer. it’s not a shame that mukesh could’t sing all kind of songs becaus evry singer of that time faced the same problem,Mukesh sang for Naushad in Andaz,In Saathi( he used no rafi only mukesh) in mela etc etcMukesh sings for OP.Nayer a total rafi fan in movies like ek baar muskura do, sambhand, miss coca cola etc etc.Mukesh sang for shammi kapoor,for Rajesh Khanna,for amitabh bachan,for dev anand,for feroz khan for Diliph Kumar,shashi kapoor,rajendre kumar,manoj kumar etc.Another fact is that mukesh did not sang many songs in a year rafi sang like 600 songs in a year and like 250 were hits other were forgotten and are still missing,but mukesh sang 400 songs and 300 were hit songs! that’s why the rafi collection is so big and unkown he sang so many many songs that almost 40% of all rafi songs is lost! and i have a list with all songs mukesh ever sang i miss only like 90% of them! and its not because mukesh wasn’t offerd any songs it was because mukesh couldn’t possible sing all the songs offerd to him he was mainly busy with running motilal’s factory and singing in the raj kapoor team,He supported Manoj kumar some times and Laxmikant pyarelal and Kalyani Anandji. Raj kapoor was in love with mukesh his voice! but knew that rafi was more skilled and mukesh added Rafi is a better singer then me.
Raj kapoor’s fitst choice –> Mukesh/seconde choice–>Manna Dey–>Rafi
for other actors –>Rafi sahab–>Mahendra kapoor.

kahan se laaoon woh lazzat gayi baharon ki…
tumharay saath gayi roshni chiraghon ki,

aayen hum sab uss paak rooh ki taskeen ke liye milkar dua karen kyun ke ab hamare haathon mein sewa dua karne ke aur kuchh bhi nahi jo us shakhs ko nazar kar saken.

tere geeton mein baaqi ab talak woh soz hai lekin

woh pehle phool barsaate thay,ab daman bhigote hain

mohd.rafi…..

hum tujhe yuuun bhula na payengay
jab kabhi bhi sunengay geet tere
sang sang hum bhi gungunaengay

jawaid naseem
09836540639

thanks for adding ‘irri ka raaka’. its a blast, simply ‘dhamal’! its out and out rafisaab for raj kapoor in all songs of ‘do ustaad’ songs. this song also needs to be added in the database on this site.

anmol singhji, nazarana song is already in the list – song no.16. thank you along with anwar-ul-haquesaab for encouraging words.

you are absolutely right (post 11). thanks for correcting me.i now distinctly recollect this song. it goes in the background when prithviraj kapoor drives out hero rk’s mother (lila chitnis if recollect correctly) the words are something like, ‘zulam sahe naari…….. ajab tori lila…..’. its omission on my part. incidentally this needs to be added in this site’s database.

IRONICALLY IN ANDAZ MUKESH’ PLAY BACK WAS USED FOR DILIP KUMAR INSTEAD OF RAJ KAPOOR–REVERSED IN SUBSEQUENT FILMS..

IN PREM ROG, A SONG ‘ YEH PYAR THA YA KUCH AUR THA’ WAS IN RAFI STYLE(SUNG BY ANWAR) AND MR MURTHY IS ABSOLUTELY CORRECT–THE ALAAP OF RAFI GOT TEARS IN VIEWERS EYES IN SANGAM..

Very informative article sir. It appears that you have great
amount of knowledge in the field of retro music in general and
the specific raj kapoor genre in particular.

Kindly continue to provide such insights to us about various
topics.

Wonderful !!

Nagesh Sidhanti

The song you are referring to from Awaara might be
Pativrataa Sitamaai Ko Toone Diya Banwas (with lata)