In one of the very famous interviews by Dadamuni (Kishore Kumar’s elder brother, Ashok Kumar), he was quoted saying that Kishore never had any formal classical training in music. In fact his family members joked at him whenever he tried to modulate his voice, because of his coarse grating voice. When he was young, once he hurt himself badly and kept crying endlessly in pain. He used to cry in pain for almost 20 hours and that continued for a month. After that, a miracle happened.

Gradually the wound healed and one’s month’s crying practice, suddenly cleared his voice and it became melodious.

Thus was born, Abhas Kumar Ganguly’s new avataar popularly known as “Kishore kumar”. He was the second golden male voice that the film industry produced, the first being that of Kundan Lal Sehgal.

Kishore still lives and will always live. He worked with the best of playback singers in Bollywood, from Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Manna Dey to Mohd Rafi. He worked behind the scenes and became a success mantra for many of the actors including Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan.

Let’s celebrate the evergreen music from the man himself. Tune into the Ovi Music Store for a special Kishore Kumar collection.

Kishore Kumar

Kishore Kumar with Salil Choudhary