Veteran music composer K. Raghavan Master passed away while under treatment at a hospital here early Saturday. He was 99, and would have turned 100 on December 2, his family said.
Raghavan Master was admitted to the hospital Friday evening, after he complained of breathlessness.
His friends and family were readying an intimate, modest, musical celebration of his 100th birthday.
Raghavan Master's cremation will take place at Talassery near here on Sunday.
In a career spanning over four decades, Raghavan Master composed music for more than 400 Malayalam film songs, and his compositions featured in more than 60 films. The music he scored for "Neelakuyil", released 1954, is often remembered.
Raghavan Master began his professional career with All India Radio in Chennai, and was transferred to Kozhikode in Kerala in 1950.
Raghavan Master shot to fame through the 1950s hit "Neelakkuyil", an early realistic movie directed jointly by Ramu Karyat and P Bhaskaran. Raghavan himself sang one of the most popular songs in that film. He had been working in the industry for more than five decades.
Since then he had rendered music for over 400 films, which included milestone Malayalam movies like 'Nirmalyam', 'Utharayanam', 'Nagaramendi', 'Unniyarcha', 'Ramanan' and 'Kallichellamma.'
His partnership with lyricist P Bhaskaran resulted in a large number of hits which helped many movies in the 1960s and 70s become big hits.
He was awarded the Padma Shri in 2010. He was also the recipient of two State Film awards. In 1997, he won the J.C. Daniel award for lifetime contribution to the Malayalam film industry.