Legendary playback singer SP Balasubrahmanyam, popularly known as Balu and SPB, died at 1.04 pm on Friday while undergoing treatment for Covid-19 at a Chennai hospital. He was 74. SP Balasubrahmanyam is survived by wife Savitri and his two children – daughter Pallavi and son SP Charan.
“In a further setback this morning, despite maximum life support measures and the best efforts of the clinical team, his condition deteriorated further, and he suffered a cardio-respiratory arrest. With profound grief, we regret to inform that he passed away…” said a release issued by hospital assistant director Dr Anuradha Baskaran.
In the first week of August, Balasubrahmanyam had tested positive for Covid-19. As it was a mild case, he was asked to quarantine at home. On September 4, he tested negative for Covid, but continued to be on the ventilator and ECMO even as he participated in passive physiotherapy. His condition deteriorated on September 23 and he was deemed extremely critical.
His son, SP Charan, addressed the media and said, “My dad breathed his last at 1:04 pm. Thank you everyone for your prayers. My dad will live long till his fans remember him.”
Balasubrahmanyam made his singing debut in 1966 with Telugu movie Sri Sri Sri Maryada Ramanna. He was a multi-talented person and had worked as a singer, actor, music director, dubbing artist and film producer in multiple languages. In his career spanning five decades, he had recorded over 40,000 songs in as many as 16 languages including Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, and Hindi. He had won the Guinness World Record for recording the highest number of songs and had been conferred Nation Award for Best Male Playback Singer six times. SPB was also bestowed with Padma Shri Award in 2001 and Padma Bhushan in 2011.
