Happy Birthday....Dasetta....................

Kattassery Joseph Yesudas (Malayalam: കാട്ടശ്ശേരി ജോസഫ് യേശുദാസ്)

                                                                          Born 10 January 1940) is an Indian classical musician and a playback singer. He has won the National Award for the best male playback singer seven times, the most by any Indian singer, and the State Award for the best playback singer more than 30 times by the Government of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal. Yesudas sings Indian classical music, devotional and popular songs. He has recorded more than 55,000 songs in many languages including Malayalam, Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati, Oriya, Marathi, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tulu, Malay, Russian, Arabic, Latin and English during a career spanning five decades. He has performed in most Indian languages except Assamese, Konkani and Kashmiri. He also composed a number of Malayalam film songs in the 1970s and 1980s.He is fondly called Gana Gandharvan (English: The Celestial Singer).

Awards and honours

Yesudas has recorded over 40,000 songs and has won scores of accolades including the coveted Padma ShriPadma Bhushan (2002) and seven National Awards for Best Playback Singer. He is the only singer who has been accorded the title Asthana Gayakan (official singer) of Kerala State. (1975),

• National Film Award for Best Male Playback Singer a record seven times by the Government of India
• Kerala State Film Awards a record 24 times for the best playback singer by the Government of Kerala
• Tamil Nadu State Film Awards eight times for the best playback singer by the Government of Tamil Nadu
• Andhra Pradesh State Film Awards six times for the best playback singer by the Government of Andra Pradesh
• Karnataka State Film Awards Five Times for the best playback singer by the Government of Karnataka
• West Bengal State Film Awards One time for the best playback singer by the Government of West Bengal
• Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (1992)
• D. Phil by Annamalai University, Tamil Nadu (1989)
• D. Litt by Kerala University, Kerala (2003)
• D. Litt by Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala (2009)
• Swaralaya - Eenam Awards 2010 - Decade's Best Talent in Malayalam Music

Personal life

Yesudas is married to Prabha for more than 30 years. They have three sons, Vinod, Vijay and Vishal. The 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 Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA and Flower Mound, TX, USA for personal and business reasons.