nellore a boy from nellore went on to enthral the world with his sweet voice for over five decades an engineering dropout sp balasubrahmanyam electrified the music world with his unique voice despite his popularity and stardom he remained the same person he was as a child and never missed a chance to be in the company of his friends from his native fondly called balu by his friends spb was always known to be a downtoearth man he never lost touch with many of his school and college day friends even after becoming a singing sensation a pall of gloom descended on nellore when the news of the noted playback singer musician and actors demise broke outbalasubrahmanyam was born on june 4 1946 to sp sambamurthy and sakunthalamma at konetimpeta in the erstwhile madras presidency the family later moved to nellore spbs father sambamurthy was a noted harikatha artist whose work lured a young balu towards the world of music however his father was initially against his son stepping into music in his formative years instead he wanted him to focus on his education spb completed his high school and college at vr high school and college in nellorehaving developed an interest in music at an early age spb studied notations and learned to play instruments such as harmonium and flute on his own while listening to his father in order to fulfil his fathers wish to see him become an engineer spb enrolled himself in an engineering course at the jntu college of engineering in anantapur balu however could not complete the course as he contracted typhoid while he did join an amie course in chennai he had already set his sights on the world of music by thenwhile balu settled down in chennai his mother continued to live at their ancestral home at tipprajuvari street in nellore till her demise in february 2019 in memory of his parents spb donated the ancestral house to kanchi sankara peetham to run a veda pathsala and renovated the building at a cost of rs 10 lakh kanchi seer sri vijeyendra saraswathi had come all the way to nellore to take over the house donated by spb and himself performed the puja for the pathsalas inauguration he was planning to come to nellore for the opening of the veda pathsala but covid19 upset those plans said t s prabhath reddy a family friend of spb vicepresident m venkaiah naidu another close friend of balu had unveiled the statue of his father sambamurthy in 2015 to commemorate the contributions of the harikatha legend among those in attendance at the function were balus close friends actor kamal haasan and director k viswanath