The Rare & Popular Songs of Talat Mahmood

                                                              Part 1

 Talat Mahmood began his singing career at the age of 16 in 1939, when he began singing the Ghazals of Daag, Mir, Jigar etc. on All India Radio, Lucknow. His voice had a quality distinct from all the other singers. HMV was quick to notice this and offered Talat his first disc in 1941 Sab din ek samaan nahin tha, Bun jaoon ga kya se kya main, Iska to kuch dhyan nahin tha. 

His reputation as a ghazal singer was not limited to his hometown of Lucknow, but it reached the city that proved to shape his destiny – Calcutta. He acted in 3 Bengali films before coming to Bombay in 1949. His big break came with the song Ae dil mujhe aisi jagha le chal jahan koi na ho composed by music director Anil Biswas, his mentor in Bombay, for the soundtrack of the film Arzoo (1950 film).

In this blog, I have selected a few unheard and rare songs of Talat Mahmood of the 40s

                                                Talat's first-ever recording of 1941

               TALAT MAHMOOD - Sab din ek samaan nahin tha NON FILM GHAZAL

                                                          Talat Mahmood (1944)

                              Tasveer Teri Dil Mera Behla Na Sakegi

Song of Rajlaxmi 1945

Song of Rajlaxmi 1945

A Rare Non-Film Song Talat

Bengali Song as Tapan Kimar

                Tumi Bojhonato Keno Kandi Talat Mahmood Tapan Kumar

Haay Bhalobasa · Tapan Kumar

Non Film Song

                        Kaabe Se Butkadey Se Kabhi Bazm e Jaam Se 

Song of Sampati 1949

                                   Yash Hey Amrit PUTRA WAHWAH ASA Marathi film

A Marathi Song by Talat Mahmood

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Begum Akhtar - The soulful voice that sung Ghalib and Khusroo.

 Akhtaribai popularly known as Begum Akhtar was born on 7th Oct 1914 at  Bada Darwaza, Town Bhadarsa, Bharatkund, District Faizabad U P.She showed interest in music at a very young age and was sent to train under the great sarangi player, Ustad Imdad Khan. Later, she learnt classical music from great exponents of this field like Mohammad Khan, Abdul Waheed Khan and Ustad Jhande Khan Saheb.
Her first public performance was at the age of fifteen.  Her first recording was done by the Megaphone Record Company at the age of Fifteen. The famous poet Sarojini Naidu appreciated her singing during a concert which was organised in the aid of victims of the 1934 Nepal–Bihar earthquake. This encouraged her to continue singing ghazals with more enthusiasm. 
Begum Akhtar was very beautiful and her sensitive voice made her an ideal candidate for a film career in her early years. 
Those days only those actors were chosen who can sing also. Begum Akhtar was also approached by many people from Bombay to work in films. So she acted in a few Hindi films She was signed by East India Film Company as a singing actor. Her first film was East India Film Company’s ‘Ek Din Ka Baadshah’ (1933). This was followed by ‘Nal Damyanti’ (1933), ‘Mumtaz Begum’ (1934), ‘Roop Kumari’ (1934), ‘Ameena’ (1934), ‘Jawani Ka Nasha’ (1935), ‘Naseeb Ka Chakkar’ (1936) etc.. In all these films, she sang all her songs herself. 
After staying at Bombay for a few years she came back to Lucknow, where she was approached by the famous producer-director Mehboob Khan, to act in Roti which was released in 1942 and whose music was composed by the maestro Anil Biswas.
In 1945, Akhtari Bai married a Lucknow-based barrister, Ishtiaq Ahmed Abbasi, and became known as Begum Akhtar. However, after marriage, due to her husband's restrictions, she could not sing for almost five years. In 1949 she returned back to the recording studios.She became a regular singer in Akashvani Lucknow Radio station.
 Begum Akhtar was persuaded by Madan Mohan, a famous music director to sing in two movies "Daana Paani" (1953) and "Ehsaan" (1954). The songs "Aye Ishq Mujhe Aur to Kuch Yaad" and "Hamein Dil Mein Basa Bhi Lo" were absolutely melodious and were liked by one and all. Her last movie stint was that of a classical singer in Satyajit Ray's film "Jalsa Ghar". Begum Akhtar was a refined Ghazal singer and was called as Mallika-e-Ghazal or the Queen of Ghazals.
She received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for vocal music and was awarded Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan(posthumously) by Govt. of India. She was given the title of Mallika-e-Ghazal (Queen of Ghazals).

Begum Akhtar performed last in a concert in Ahmedabad. That day she felt that her voice was not up to the mark and raised her pitch. This put much stress on her and her health deteriorated. The situation became critical and she had to be rushed to the hospital. She breathed her last on 30th October 1974, leaving many fans disappointed and heartbroken

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Non Film Songs Of Great Singers

Preference in music is so subjective. What I like, might not be liked by you. I like some songs due to their lyrics, some due to the singer, some due to the music, One could dislike these very songs because they don't like the lyrics, or the beats, or the singer. Similarly many of us like Film songs but many of us who like Non-film songs.
Regarding the Non Film songs, we must know that much before Films started Talking and singing, the Non-Film Songs were famous in many forms. Bhajans and Classical songs were the most popular Non-Film Songs during silent films. The first recorded song was in 1902 which was manufactured in Germany and shipped to India in April 1903. It was sung by Gauhar Jaan 
In 1930, All India Radio started and in 1931 the films started talking. However, records of film songs were in general not made those days, though the first film song record came in 1932. Till about 1939-40, records of film songs were not made from every film. So, people continued to enjoy the NON FILM SONGS by famous singers. This trend of making records of NFS was so popular that most Film singers started their careers by recording NFS. Examples are Talat Mehmood, Hemant Kumar, S D Burman, Lata, Asha, Mukesh, Rafi etc.
 In this Blog I have taken many of those Non-film songs of great singers of their time.

A Rare Non Film Song recorded in 1914,Song-Kaho guinyya kaise kate saari raat (Baby Amirjan NFS)(1914) Singer-Amirbai Karnataki

D V Paluskar was a Hindustani classical vocalist. He was considered a child prodigy. He cut his first disc in 1944.. He was a master at presenting an attractive and comprehensive picture of a raga in a very short duration. Besides pure classical music, he was also a great Bhajan singer. 

K L Saigal The immortal Singer K L Saigal rendered 185 songs which include 142 film songs and 43 non-film songs. His non-film songs comprise bhajans, ghazals and hori. 

                               Mein Jo Dinan Ki Thhori Hori Geet by KL Saigal

Pankaj Mullick, worked as music director to artists like K.L. Saigal, S.D. Burman, Hemanta Mukherjee, Geeta Dutt and Asha Bhosle. He acted with famous film actors like K L Saigal, P.C. Barua and Kanan Devi. Along with Nitin Bose His voice best suited for philosophical and sentimental songs. He sang many such genresmaster madan of songs both filmy and non-filmy.

                                           Na Kar Itna Pyar... Pankhaj Mallick

Master Madan was a child prodigy, unfortunately, he died at the age of 15. The child prodigy started singing at the tender age of three and quickly became a craze all over India. His astonishingly mature voice left a deep impression on the listeners. Anyone with even a passing interest in music is familiar with these two Sagar Nizami's ghazals,

Yun naa reh reh kar hamein tarsaaiye

Hairat se tak rahaa hei jahane wafa mujhe

Noorjehan was the female singing superstar in the 40s. She shifted to Pakistan during the partition. She may have sung many NFS in Pakistan but in India, she sang only a few one of those is given here.

Jogan ki jholi bhar de o shah madeene waale

C.H. Atma  His evergreen song is 'Preetam Aan Milo', which he sang in 1945 for a private album. In 1955, the same song was sung by Geeta Dutt for the film, Mr. & Mrs. '55 for composer O. P. Nayyar, who was a great fan of his singing.^[2] His voice was quite similar to K. L. Saigal. But he had his own unique style which he implied to become one of the fewest singers to become extensively popular both in film and non-film music. 

Begum Akhtar  a well known Indian singer of Ghazal, Dadra, and Thumrigenres of Hindustani classical music. She was given the title of Mallika-e-Ghazal .She was among the early female singers to give a public concert. Her first public performance was at the age of fifteen.She has nearly four hundred songs to her credit. She was a regular performer on All India Radio. She usually composed her own ghazals and most of her compositions were raag based.Her ghazal ‘ae mohabbat tere anjaam pe ronaa aayaa’ and Begum Akhtar are inseparable. 

Geeta Dutt -It was in the year 1946 that Geeta Roy sang for Pandit Hanuman Prasad in a mythological movie, Bhakt Prahlad. In 1947 S D Burman took her for Do Bhai. The success of the music of Do Bhai (especially the song "Mera sundar sapna beet gaya") catapulted Geeta to the top bracket of female playback singers. 

Talat Mahmood   was a very gifted singer in every sense. He was particularly famous for singing soft and sombre semi-classical and non-classical ghazals, He started his career purely as a ghazal singer in 1939. Talat Mahmood began his singing career at the age of 16 in 1939 when he began singing the Ghazals of Daag, Mir, Jigar etc. on All India Radio, Lucknow. In 1944 came the hit Tasveer teri dil mera behela nah sake gi. Its popularity was so phenomenal and unrivalled that even today it remains one of the top-selling non-film discs

Manna Dey, He debuted in the film Tamanna in 1942. After the song "Upar Gagan Bishal" composed by S D Burman he saw success and went on to record more than 4,000 songs. The first song which was broadcasted on the inaugural day of Vividh Bharati was ‘naach re mayuraa’ (1957)which was sung by Manna Dey. The song was penned by Pandit Narendra Sharma especially for the occasion and set to music by Anil Biswas

Hemant Kumar - an Indian playback singer, music directorand film producer, who sang in Bengali, Hindi and other Indian languages. He is also the greatest artist of Rabindra Sangeet. In 1947, Hemanta recorded a non-film song called "Ganyer badhu"  that had music and lyrics by Salil Chowdhury..This song generated an unforeseen popularity for Hemanta 

Hemant Kumar sang nearly 60 NFS of which three-fourth were released in the 40s and 50s. Most of his NFSs of 40s and 50s were composed by music directors like Kamal Dasgupta, Durga Sen, Ravi 

The two most popular NFSs of Hemant Kumar in terms of frequency of them being played on the radio in the 60s were (i) ‘aanchal se kyon baandh liyaa mujhe pardesi kaa pyaar’ and (ii) ‘bhala thhaa kitnaa apnaa bachpan’. 

aanchal se kyon baandh liyaa mujhe pardesi kaa pyaar

Paa kar bhi tumhen ham paa na sakey

Meena Kumari -We all know about her acting but we are not aware of her singing and poetic side.she wrote shayari in the pseudo name of Naaz.Meena Kumari was also a playback singer. She sung as a child artist for films like Bahen till 1945.She sang 3 songs for the film  Duniya Ek Sarai (1946),five songs for Piya Ghar Aaja (1947),6 songs for Bichchade Balam (1948) even ONE song for Pakeezah (1972). However, this song was not used in the film and was later released in the album Pakeezah-Rang Barang (1977).

Poetry was in her blood. Her father Ali Baksh was an Urdu poet and attached with Parsi theatre. Her mother, Iqbal Bano was actually a stage artist,In 1970, an LP was released,The title of the LP – ‘I Write, I Recite’. This LP has nine ghazals written and sung by herself. 

Chaand tanha hai aasmaan tanha 

Malika Pukhraj -  a highly popular Ghazal and folk singer.Sometime in the late 30s, the glamour of films brought her to Bombay (Mumbai) to act in films. However, after doing a couple of day’s shooting for a film, she could not adjust to the atmosphere of film shooting. So she left the film half-way and fled to Lahore feigning illness. 

Like Begum Akhtar, in the later years, Malika Pukhraj mainly concentrated on singing ghazals based on semi-classical music. She also sang and recorded folk songs in Dogri, her native language.She was among the greatest singers of India in the 1940s, and after Partition of India in 1947, she migrated to Lahore, Pakistan, where she received much more fame, through her radio performances

Abhi to main jawaan hoon

Mukesh - is considered to be one of the most popular and acclaimed singers of the Hindi film industry.The first song that he sang for a Hindi film was "Dil Jalta Hai To Jalne De".He also sang many non film songs.It is more than 100.

Baharon Se Keh Do ... Mere Ghar Na Aayein

                            Jiyenge Magar Muskura Na Sakenge Ki Ab Zindagi Main...

Mohammed Rafi -one of the greatest singers of the Indian sub continent..Rafi was notable for his voice and versatility; his songs ranged from fast peppy numbers to patriotic songs, sad numbers to highly romantic songs, qawwalis to ghazals and bhajans to classical songs. He has sung in many regional Indian languages including Konkani, Assamese, Bhojpuri, Odia, Punjabi, Bengali, Marathi, Sindhi, Kannada, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Magahi, Maithili. Apart from Indian languages, he also sang songs in many foreign languages including English, Farsi, Arabic, Sinhalese, Creole and Dutch.He recorded many private albums in various genres and languages, many of which are noted as all-time classics today.

                                                 Tum Aao Rumjhum Karti

                                            Ek Hi Baat Zamane Ki- Mohd Rafi Ghazal

Lata Mangeshkar - Lata Mangeshkar had sung many ghazals in Hindi films especially under the baton of Madan Mohan. During 1960-70, Lata Mangeshkar had sung some beautiful non-filmy ghazals. In 1969, a LP of her non-filmy ghazals of Mirza Ghalib composed by her brother Pandit Hridaynath Mangeshkar was released.Similarly LP of Lata was released in 70s of Meera Bhajan The album's name is actually known as "Chala Wahi Des".Another immortal NFS is "Ae mere watan ke logon” 

                                                    Lata ji Sings Mirza Ghalib...

Ghiri ghataayen aasmaan par( Lata NFS)(1969)