Biography

Thoguluva Meenatchi Iyengar Soundararajan, popularly known as TMS, was an Indian Carnatic musician and a playback singer in Tamil cinema for over six and a half decades. He lent his voice to actors and thespians in the South Indian film industry such as M. G. Ramachandran, Sivaji Ganesan, N. T. Rama Rao, Gemini Ganesan, S. S. Rajendran, Jaishankar, Ravichandar, AVM Rajan, Muthuraman, Nagesh, Siva Kumar, Kantha Rao, Rajkumar,Prem Nazir and A. Nageswara Rao. He also gave his voice to many new generation actors like Kamalahasan, Rajanikanth, Vijayakanth, Satyaraj, Rajesh, Prabhu, and Vijaya Kumar, in addition to other known and unknown heroes and supporting actors like M.R. Radha, K R Ramaswami, T. Rajendar, V.K. Ramaswami, Thengai Sreenivasan, M.N. Nambiar, Thangavelu, Y.G. Mahendran, R.S. Manohar, S.V. Ashokan, Ranjan, Narasimha Bharathi, Sahasra Namam,T S Balayya, Jagayya, Nagayya,Sreenath,Shankar etc. He sang over 10,138 songs from 3162 films, including devotional, semi-classical, Carnatic, classical and light music songs. He gave classical concerts starting in 1945. In a career spanning over six and half decades he has recorded film songs in 11 languages including, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Hindi, Malayalam and other languages. He was a lyricist and music composer for many devotional songs. He was the music director for the film Bala Parikshai. His peak period as a male playback singer in the South Indian film industry was from 1955 to 1985. His first film song was in 1946, at the age of 24, and his last was with P. Suseela during 2010 at the age of 88. TMS died on 25 May 2013 at his residence in Mandaveli, Chennai due to illness. He was 91 years old.