Manna Dey

Prabodh Chandra Dey (1 May 1919 − 24 October 2013), known by his stage name Manna Dey, was an internationally acclaimed Indian playback singer, music director, musician and Indian classical vocalist. As an classical vocalist, he belonged to the Bhendibazaar gharana. He was trained under Ustad Aman Khan. He is considered one of the most versatile and celebrated vocalists of the Hindi film industry. He was one of the playback singers credited with the success of Indian classical music in Hindi commercial movies. He debuted in the film Tamanna in 1942. After the song “Upar Gagan Bishal” composed by S D Burman he saw success and went on to record more than 4,000 songs till 2013. The Government of India honoured him with the Padma Shri in 1971, the Padma Bhushan in 2005, Padma Vibhusan in 2012 and the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2007.Dey sang in all the major regional Indian languages, though primarily in Bengali and Hindi Dey also sang in Bhojpuri, Magadhi, Maithili, Punjabi, Assamese, Odia, Konkani, Sindhi, Gujarati, Marathi, Kannada, Malayalam, and Nepali. His peak period in Hindi playback singing was from 1953 to 1976. His singing was simple and always had a classical touch. Kishore Kumar with his versatile singing according to mood overshadowed him in 70s and 80s. Finally he had to withdraw singing Hindi songs because of inability to improvise as per changing trends in Bollywood.