Geeta Dutt

She was born in 1930 into a landowning family in Faridpur, now in Bangladesh, and the family moved to Calcutta and then, in 1942, to Bombay. The composer Hanuman Prasad heard her singing at home and gave her two lines in Bhakta Prahlad (1946). The next year S.D. Burman gave her the whole of Do Bhai, and Mera Sundar Sapna Beet Gaya, sung at sixteen, made her a star singer before Lata Mangeshkar had had a hit.

Through the early 1950s she was in demand for every kind of song, particularly the devotional and the sad — Jogan, Baazi, Jaal — and she met Guru Dutt during the recording of Baazi (1951). They married in 1953. Aar Paar (1954), Mr. & Mrs. 55 (1955), C.I.D. (1956), Pyaasa (1957) and Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959) followed, with O.P. Nayyar and S.D. Burman writing for her: Babuji Dheere Chalna, Thandi Hawa Kali Ghata, Jaane Kya Tune Kahi, Waqt Ne Kiya Kya Haseen Sitam. Nayyar also gave her the Howrah Bridge songs for Madhubala and Helen.

The marriage came under strain in the late 1950s — Guru Dutt's attachment to Waheeda Rehman was widely discussed — and Geeta, who had been asked to sing only for her husband's productions, found her assignments elsewhere drying up. Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam (1962), with Na Jao Saiyan Chhuda Ke Baiyan and Piya Aiso Jiya Mein, was her last great score. Guru Dutt died in October 1964, leaving her with three children, debts and a drinking problem that had already begun.

She tried to work again — stage shows, a Bengali film, Anubhav (1971) for Kanu Roy, in which Meri Jaan Mujhe Jaan Na Kaho showed the voice was still there — but her health gave out. She died of cirrhosis in Bombay in July 1972, aged forty-one. Her recordings for S.D. Burman and O.P. Nayyar remain among the most replayed of the decade.

Geeta Dutt's voice had a warmth and a slight huskiness that made her sound older and more knowing than her years, and a complete absence of calculation — she sang as if she felt every word that minute. She was not a trained classical singer, and composers valued her for the opposite reason: the natural swing, the lilt in the Bengali-inflected phrasing, and the ability to be mischievous and heartbroken in the same film. O.P. Nayyar said she could sing a cabaret like a street girl and a bhajan like a saint.