MUMBAI: Gana Gandharvan Yesudas celebrates his birthday on 10 January. The versatile singer has sung 50,000 songs in 17 languages during his career spanning five decades.
His father, Augustine Joseph was a well-known Malayalam classical musician and his first guru.
His most popular Hindi songs are from movie Chitchor (1976), music composed by Ravindra Jain. He has won the National Award for the Best Male Playback Singer seven times and the State Award for the Best Playback Singer forty three times, which consists of awards by the state governments of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and West Bengal. In 1975, he was awarded Padma Shri and in 2002 was honoured by Padma Bhushan by the Government of India for his contributions to the arts.
He is married to Prabha and has three sons. His second son Vijay Yesudas is a budding musician who won the Kerala State Film Award for Best Male Playback Singer in 2007. The family is currently settled in Chennai and Trivandrum. He also owns estates in Florida.