Manna Dey

Prabodh Chandra Dey was born in Calcutta in 1919 into a family where music was taken seriously: his uncle was K.C. Dey, the blind singer-actor of the New Theatres films, and the boy learnt from him and from Ustad Dabir Khan. He was also a wrestler and boxer at Scottish Church College. In 1942 he came to Bombay as his uncle's assistant, worked under K.C. Dey and then S.D. Burman as a music assistant, and sang his first film song, a duet with Suraiya, in Tamanna (1943).

Through the 1940s he sang mostly devotional and character songs — Upar Gagan Vishal in Mashal (1950), composed by S.D. Burman, was his first big solo — and he continued his classical training with Aman Ali Khan and Abdul Rahman Khan. Shankar-Jaikishan gave him the Raj Kapoor songs that Mukesh did not sing: Pyar Hua Iqrar Hua and Yeh Raat Bheegi Bheegi in Shree 420 and Chori Chori, and later Ae Bhai Zara Dekh Ke Chalo in Mera Naam Joker. Salil Chowdhury and Hemant Kumar wrote for his Bengali side as well as his Hindi.

The classical set pieces came to him as a matter of course: Laaga Chunari Mein Daag in Dil Hi To Hai, Poochho Na Kaise Maine Rain Bitayi in Meri Surat Teri Ankhen, Sur Na Saje in Basant Bahar, the Bhairavi duel with Bhimsen Joshi in Ketaki Gulab Juhi. So did the Mehmood songs — Ek Chatur Naar in Padosan, with Kishore, is the most famous — and the big group songs: Ae Meri Zohra Jabeen in Waqt, Yaari Hai Imaan Mera in Zanjeer, Yeh Dosti in Sholay with Kishore.

He won the National Award for Mere Huzoor (1969) and Mera Naam Joker (1971), the Padma Shri in 1971, the Padma Bhushan in 2005 and the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2007. He moved to Bangalore in his later years with his wife Sulochana Kumaran, kept performing into his eighties, and died there in October 2013 at ninety-four.

Manna Dey's voice is a trained, open tenor with the weight to carry a khayal-based composition and the agility for fast taans, and he used it with a directness that owed more to the classical stage than to the microphone. That training made him the safest pair of hands for a difficult song and, he always felt, kept him from the romantic lead, whose songs needed a lighter, more conversational touch. Where the song called for authority — a saint, a philosopher, a qawwal, a drunk — nobody else came close.