Jagjit Singh

He was born in Sri Ganganagar in 1941, learned from Pandit Chhaganlal Sharma and Ustad Jamaal Khan, and came to Mumbai in 1965 to sing advertising jingles and small film songs; he married the singer Chitra Dutta in 1969, and their joint albums from The Unforgettables onward — Come Alive, Ecstasies, A Milestone, Beyond Time — defined the ghazal cassette era.

Their only son Vivek died in a road accident in 1990; Chitra stopped singing, and Jagjit's later albums (Sajda with Lata Mangeshkar, Marasim with Gulzar, Face to Face, Soz) turned graver. He sang bhajans, Punjabi songs and Gurbani, composed for Arth, Saath Saath, Prem Geet, Khal-Nayak and the television Mirza Ghalib (1988), and was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2003. He died in Mumbai in 2011 after a brain haemorrhage.

A warm, smooth, unhurried baritone with no strain anywhere, placed exactly on the word; he sang below the virtuosity of the Pakistani masters on purpose, so the listener heard the couplet first.