Dr. Kattassery Joseph Yesudas (born January 10, 1940), is a noted South Indian musician. He was born in Fort Kochi, Kerala to Augustine and Elizabeth Joseph. His father Augustine Joseph, who was his first guru (teacher), was a well known Malayalam classical musician and stage actor of his time.
Yesudas is a Malayali singer, and exponent of carnatic music. He joined the Music Academy in Thirupunithura and won a gold medal for music at a local competition in Fort Kochi at age 7.
In his career he has sung more than 30,000 songs for thousands of Indian films in many languages such as Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Gujarati, Telugu and Bengali. He was also invited by the Soviet Government to perform music concerts in various cities of the U.S.S.R in 1965.
His first movie playback song was for the movie Kalpadukal, in 1961. His first Hindi song was for the movie Anand Mahal, with music given by Salil Chowdhury. His most popular Hindi songs are from the movie Chitchor, with music given by Ravindra Jain.
The President of India conferred on him the title of Padmashree in 1973.
Dr. Yesudas and his wife Prabha have three sons, Vinod, Vijay and Vishal. The family is currently settled in Madras, India.