T. K. Ramamoorthy

T.K. Ramamoorthy’s full name is Tiruchirapalli Krishnaswami Ramamoorthy. He was born on 15th of May, 1922 in Tiruchirapalli during the reign of the British Empire in Madras District. He died recently in 17th of April 2013 in Chennai, India. He was a renowned Tamil music composer as well as a violinist. Ramamoorthy was also called MellisaiMannar, which actually means The King of Light Music. Another person to have got the title was M.S. Viswanathan. He has done all his works mostly in South Indian language, mainly in Telugu, Malayalam, and Tamil. Both of them formed a pact famously known as the Ramamoorthy-Viswanathan duo whohad contributed their songs to over a hundred movies. They did most of their work during 1950-60. This famous duo had broken apart later in 1965, but they rejoined after twenty-nine years for the film EngirundhoVartan, in 1995.

T.K. Ramamoorthy was born into a family who were inclined to music from the very beginning. His father and grandfather namely K. Pillai and M. Govindaswamy Pillai respectively, were very renowned violinists in the place of his birth, Tiruchirapalli. He had performed in numerous stage concerts and shows during his childhood, assisted by his father. At the very young age of fourteen, his talent was spotted by Subburaman, and he got selected as a violinist in HMV. Early in his life, he used to work in Saraswati stores. His partner was the owner of AVM studios, A.V. Chettiar. It also paved the way for him to play the role of a violinist for the music composer of AVM studios. During this time he also became friend with a pianist and composer of Malayalam language named P.S. Diwakar. Subburaman reached great heights of fame and popularity during the late 1940’s, and Ramamoorthy was a part of his musical team.

When Subburaman died unexpectedly, both Ramamoorthy and Vishwanathan teamed up to complete his incomplete work. Ramamoorthy was a shy, honest and a bit of a reserved person where Vishwanathan was just his opposite. He was charming, pretty straightforward and smart. Ramamoorthy was older than Vishwanathan by six years, and his knowledge about the native language music was way more than what Vishwanathan had. As mentioned earlier they worked as a duo and contributed their music in more than hundred films during the late fifties and early sixties,they were the best South Indian composers at that time. After their breaking up in 1965, Vishwanathan had composed music formore than twelve hundred films whereas Ramamoorthy could only do about twenty films after his departure with Vishwanathan. He did not go without any awards. He was presented with an honorary doctorateby S.D. University, in the year 2006. He even got special recognition by Tamil Nadu CM Jayalalitha as Thirai Isai Chakravarthy. Sadly he died at the age of 91, in 2013.