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Name
Shamshad Begum
Date of Birth
14th April, 1919
Birth Place
Amritsar, Punjab
Father’s Name
Mother’s Name
Best Singer
K.L. Saigal
Shamshad Begum is an Indian
Singer
who was one of the First
Playback Singers
in the
Hindi film
Industry. She earned 15
rupees per song
and was awarded 5000 on the completion of the contract on Jenaphone.
Begum started her radio career on
Peshawar Radio
and did work in
Lahore,
Delhi etc.
Shamshad was very much conscious of her not so beautiful face and she never
posed for any picture and not many people saw her pictures anywhere. Until
the end of the70s, nobody knew her face but everybody could recognise her
melodious voice as it was used by the great
maestros like
Naushad Ali and
O. P. Nayyar.
Even today her songs from 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s are popular and
remixed by upcoming music directors
Her crystal clear voice caught the
attention of sarangi maestro
Ustad Hussain Bakshwale
Saheb, who took her as his disciple. Lahore-based composer
Ghulam Haider
used her voice skillfully in some of his earlier films like:
Khazanchi
(1941) and
Khandaan
(1942). When he shifted to
Bombay in 1944,
Shamshad went with him as a member of his team, leaving behind the family
and staying which her Chacha (Paternal Uncle). She is credited with singing
one of the first Westernised songs, Meri Jaan Sunday Ke Sunday.
Sometime back, a controversy erupted
in the media, when several publications, gave the false news of her death,
before it was clarified that the Shamshad Begum who died in 1998. Recently,
she celebrated her 89th birthday at her elder sister's house and now she
stays at
Powai,
Mumbai. She was
conferred the
Padma Bhushan
in 2009. |
