Jolly Mukherjee
From chorus singer to playback singer, from musician to arranger, composer and background music director, the Jolly Mukherjee graph has gone up the musical scale since his beginnings in the late 70's.
Jolly has indeed come a long way from his days as a chorus singer. "I am an entirely self-made and self-taught man. From my days as a chorus singer and a jingle singer later, I would take interest in the musical aspect, because from childhood my interest lay in intricacies of composing and arranging music. I would consult and pester arrangers and musicians and attempt to write notations on my own and gradually I succeeded. Laxmikant-Pyarelal gave me a playback break in Dayavan and I did get to sing in films like Chaalbaaz, Narshima, Insaaf Apne Lahu Se, Aadmi, Agnisakshi, Judge Mujrim, Raja Babu, Aatish and several others. Then Shahsi Gopal of Magnasound, who is an old friend gave me a break as arranger in Haazir, the Hariharan album. Hari has been an old friend too, and I began to experiment as an arranger due to his encouragement.
" ... I have with R. D. Burman as a chorus singer and later sang for him in Indrajeet ( reshmi zelfen) and Tum Karo Vada and I am a great fan of his. ..". Jolly does concede that Pancham even made him sing under his baton in a style similar to Pacham's own.
Jolly is now exploring his greater horizons. He has done or has been signed for several international albums wherein he will work as an arranger for the strings section. "Amar, an 18 year old Indian girl, has signed with Warners Bros. I arranged six songs for her." he reveals. Jolly did four songs for Underwolves, a Polygram International Album. He is doing two songs for a singer called Bjork from Iceland. He is also working with Khaled of Didi fame. Finally there is Ethnic Melodies, which he signed with Palm Pictures, USA, which is a division of Island Records. This is an instrumental album composed, conceived and arranged by Jolly.
Jolly Mukherjee also scored background music with Kishore Sodha for Dushmani, Bombai Ka Babu and Zameer and turned composer with the Magnasound album Kasak. His jingles include the famous Lifebuoy number, "Tandurusti ki raksha kartaa hai Lifebuoy", as well of those of other products like Ponds, Red Label Tea and Apollo Tyres. His latest film songs include his frothy number with Hariharan and Kamal Hasan in Hey Ram