The passing away of music legend S P Balasubrahmanyam has lost one of its melodious voices. He has sung more than 40,000 songs in various languages, won six national awards in four languages. However, there are some things in his life unknown to many. One of that is he was an engineering dropout.

He was a student of JNTU in Anantapur. For some reasons, he had to quit engineering. He later got admission in Chennai Institution of Engineers. His dream still was music.

He participated in many music competitions in between his studies. He stunned everyone with his voice and had won many competitions. He made his film debut in 1966 by singing in Sri Sri Sri Maryada Ramanna. His first hit song in Tamil was from MGR’s Adimaipen. His first song in Malayalam was from the film Kadalppalam for G Devarajan. The singer has set a record for singing the highest number of songs in a day.

The singer has recorded 21 songs in 12 hours for Kannada composer Upendra Kumar. He has also recorded 19 Tamil songs in a day and 16 songs in a day in Hindi. He has acted in 72 films in Telugu, Kannada and Tamil languages. He first acted in K Balachander’s Manathil Uruthi Vendum. He fluently speaks many languages and is also a dubbing artiste.