Jerry who assisted Naushad, teaching tunes to thespians like Mohammed Rafi and Lata Mangeshkar made a sensational debut in Malayalam films. The film Manjil Virinja Pookal (1980), aided by Jerry's brilliant music score was a huge success. He won the State award for best music director that year. "We did the recording in Thiruvananthapuram but had most of the musicians from Kochi. All of them were so talented but needed a little training. I remember we took almost 12 hours to record a song. Though we had provision for punching we opted to go for direct recording. The results were satisfying. So many of those musicians, like Jerson Antony, Berny-Ignatius, later turned out to become very good composers."