Sripathi Panditaradhyula Balasubrahmanyam popularly known as S.P.B and Balu has referred himself publicly n-number of times as "Ekalavya Sishya" (untaught disciple) of legendary music director Ghantasala. S.P.B is the first recipient of the "Ghantasala National Award" named after the renowned singer & music director Ghantasala garu. In 1964, he won the first prize in a music competition for amateur singers organized by the Madras-based Telugu Cultural organization, the judge of the show is Ghantasala.
This earned his first opportunity from music director S. P. Kodandapani in 1996 for the film ‘Sri Sri Sri Maryada Ramanna’. In a gap of few years he sung in Tamil, Malayalam, and Hindi languages as playback singer. Tsunami of his singing which started in 1960 is still continuing with more than 4ok sung by him, holding the Genius book record of having sung the most number of songs for any male playback singer in the world, S.P.B even holds the record of getting four National Film awards as a playback singer and only person to be awarded golden Nandi 25 times by Andhra Pradesh state government.
