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One of the most popular singers in Bollywood in the 1950s and the 1970s was Mukesh. He is one of the most recognized names in Indian cinema for playback singing. He lived from July 22, 1923 to August 27, 1976. He was one of the leading playback singers in Bollywood in his time along with the other lead singers like Kishore Kumar and Mohammed Rafi. The original name of Bollywood singer Mukesh was Mukesh Chand Mathur. He was from the city of Punjab and belonged to a middle class family.

In his family, Mukesh was the sixth child out of the ten children. Lala Zorawar Chand Mathur - his father, was an engineer. His mother`s name was Chand Rani. His sister Sundar Pyari used to take music lessons from a music teacher who discovered a flair for music in the young Mukesh who showed keen interest in music. After the 10th standard Mukesh left school and began working for the Delhi Department of Public Works. In the mean time he started experimenting with recordings of his voice recordings and gradually started to develop his abilities for singing.



In the year 1946, Mukesh married the daughter of a millionaire Gujarati Brahmins - Sarla Trivedi. Since the couple wasn`t given permission for marrying, they eloped and got maaried in a Kandiwali temple. They happily celebrated their thirtieth wedding anniversary on July 22nd in the year 1976. This was five days before he left for a tour to the U.S.A. The couple had five children Nitin, Rita, Nalini, Mohnish and Namrata. The first break in his music career came when Mukesh got noticed by Motilal, singing in his sister`s wedding. Motilal was a popular actor in his time and also his distant relative.

Motilal took Mukesh to Bombay and arranged for his singing lessons. It was during this time that Mukesh got a role to sing for a Hindi film called Nirdosh. His first break as a singer came in 1945 with the release of the movie Pehli Nazar where he had sung. He is best recognized for his playback singing for the legendary actor Raj Kapoor. In the year 1974, Mukesh was honored the National Film Award in the Best Male Playback Singer category for a song from the film Rajnigandha. He won Filmfare Awards for playback singing in many more films. On August 27, 1976, Mukesh expired after being struck by a heart attack. At that time he was in Detroit in Michigan, USA for a musical concert.

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