The amazingly versatile singer, Mohammed Rafi was
born on 24 December 1924.
He was born in Kotla Sultan Singh village, Punjab.
His nickname was Pheeko began singing by imitating chants of a fakir who roamed
the streets. His father moved to Lahore in 1935, where he ran a men's
barbershop.
He learnt classical music from Ustad Abdul Wahid
Khan, Pandit Jiwan Lal Mattoo and Firoze Nizami. His first public performance
came at age of 13.
In 1941, he made debut as playback singer in duet
'Soniye Nee, Heeriye Nee' with Zeenat Begum in Punjabi film Gul Baloch under
music director Shyam Sunder. In that same year, he was invited by All India
Radio Lahore station to sing. He made Hindi film debut in Gaon Ki Gori in 1945.
He was known for his ability to mould voice to
persona and style of the actor lip-syncing the song on screen. He recorded over
7,000 songs in a career, in Hindi, Punjabi, Konkani, Assamese, Bhojpuri, Odia,
Bengali, Marathi, Sindhi, Kannada, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Magahi, Maithili
and more. He also sang in English, Farsi, Arabic, Sinhala, Mauritian Creole and
Dutch.
He was of a gentle calm demeanour and a humble,
selfless, God-fearing and family loving gentleman. He was noted to never send
anyone back empty-handed and generously helped many. He made an early exit at
55 years.
His recognitions include four Filmfare Awards, a National
Film Award, Padma Shri and the list goes on.
Books on him include Sujata Dev's Mohammed Rafi –
Golden Voice of the Silver Screen and Mohammed Rafi Voice of a Nation, a book
authorised by his son Shahid.
Award winning documentary Dastaan-E-Rafi directed
by Rajni Acharya and Vinay Patel featured over 60 interviews of various
Bollywood personas.
He died on 31 Jul 1980.
