The thing that set the legendary vocalist Mohammed Rafi apart from his contemporaries was his ability to juggle between songs with a range as wide as the Himalayas and as diverse as chalk and cheese. He could pull off a classical ‘Madhuban Mein Radhika Nache’
Rafi’s flair for singing was spotted at an early age while he was performing for Radio Lahore. He started off with a Punjabi movie,Gul Baloch (1944). The same year, he travelled to Mumbai to sing forPehle Aap.The struggle continued in a ten-by-ten-foot room in the crowded downtown area in Mumbai and after partition, Rafi decided to stay back in India and had the rest of his family flown toMumbai.
A voice like Rafi’s could not go unnoticed for long. A strange incident got him into Naushad’s recording room. During a recording forBabul (1950), singer Talat Mahmud enraged senior music director Naushad by daring to smoke in his presence. Consequently, it was Talat’s rival who found himself making his major breakthrough with two Naushad films in 1952 –Baiju BawraandAan.Aan’s hits like‘Maan Mera Ehsaan Aray Nadaan’earned Rafi Dilip Kimar’s loyalty whileBaiju Bawra’sclassical songs like ‘Insaan Bano’demonstrated that he could sing three octaves without losing control.
It took the singer the entire ‘50s to establish his supremacy over his competition and his association with Naushad, and later O.P Nayer, helped him become the most prominent playback singer of his time. Mukesh and Kishore Kumar, who were equally popular, were thwarted by their obsessions with their acting careers while the highly specialized vocals of Talat Mahmud and Hemant Kumar simply fell by the wayside. From 1960 to 1969, Rafi ruled as the unchallenged voice among male playback singers but that did not give the soft-spoken singer enough reason to cut down on hisriyaz. His controlled slurring in songs such as ‘Choo Lene Do Nazuk Honto Ko’and ‘Chalkaein Jaam’ was much admired but the god-fearing Rafi himself never touched alcohol in his life.
For Rafi, his songs were never only recording room affairs. He took care to understand every articulation of poetry in “Main Zindagi Ka Sath Nibata Chala Gaya’(Hum Dono),his voice could infuse great yearning into a number like ‘Tere Mere Sapne Ab Ek Rang Hein’ and also bring a light-heartedness to his Shammi Kapoor songs. Could there be anyone else who could pull off with such flourish the ‘Tareef Karoon Kia Uski’refrain at the end of ‘Yeh Chand Sa Roshan Chehra’?
During the mid ‘60s, Lata Mangeshkar raised the issue of royalty payments for playback singers and wanted Rafi to back her in demanding a fifty percent share in the music
His battle with Lata and his temporary opinion about singing as a sin after he performed Hajj decreased his output as a singer. In the early ‘70s, Rafi produced some of his best songs, such as ‘Teri Bindiyaa Re’ and‘Chura Liya’, but he eventually had to make way for Kishore who became unstoppable after Aradhna. Kishore Kumar became to Rajesh Khanna what he was to Shammi Kapoor.
Rafi hit back with the power-packed‘Parda Hai Parda Hai’and the National and Filmfare Award winner‘Kya Hua Tera Waada’ in the late ‘70s and admirers like Manmohan Desai now openly declared Rafi’s superiority over the competition. He gave many other hit songs in late 1970s, notably for the filmsLaila Majnu(1976),Apnapan(1978),Qurbani,Dostana(1980) andThe Burning Train(1980).
On Thursday, July 31, 1980 after composing a song for the movieAas Paas, Rafi asked Laxmikant-Pyarelal (LP) if he could leave for home. The duo was surprised because Rafi was always the last person to leave the recording session. On his way out, the singer said almost to himself, “OK, I will leave.” And he did, to never return to the studios again, for he suffered a massive heart attack that very night and passed away. The voice that had entertained millions was silenced forever.