Bhupinder Singh

He was born in Amritsar in 1940, the son of a musician who taught him strictly, and worked at All India Radio and Doordarshan in Delhi, where Madan Mohan heard him and brought him to Bombay for Haqeeqat (1964) — Hoke Majboor Mujhe, with Rafi, Talat and Manna Dey. He played guitar and later the Spanish and Hawaiian guitars on hundreds of R.D. Burman and other recordings through the 1960s and 1970s, and sang when Gulzar, Jaidev, Khayyam or Madan Mohan wanted a voice that did not sound like a film singer.

Mausam (1975), Gharaonda (1977), Kinara (1977), Thodi Si Bewafaii (1980), Bazaar (1982) and Aitbaar (1985) hold his best film work. From the 1980s he and Mitali Mukherjee, whom he married in 1983, recorded ghazals — Gulzar's words among them — and performed together. He received the Padma Shri posthumously in 2023, having died in Mumbai in July 2022.

Bhupinder's voice was a deep, dry, slightly gravelly baritone with no film gloss at all — a voice that sounded like a man thinking aloud — and it is why Gulzar's reflective lyrics sit so naturally in it. He sang quietly and let the words lead; the guitar player's sense of rhythm shows in the easy, late placing of each phrase.