Mohammed Rafi was popular playback singer of India . He was one of the most famous singers of the Hindi film industry. Rafi have an extra ordinary voice . Due to his notable voice and versatility ; he have large range of songs including from classical numbers to patriotic songs, sad lamentations to highly romantic numbers, qawwalis to ghazals and bhajans. He was also have ability to mould his voice to the persona of the actor, lip-synching the song on screen in the movie. He won six Filmfare Awards and one National Film Award. In 1967, he was honoured by Padma Shri award by the Government of India.

Mohammed Rafi was born on 24 December 1924 . Rafi’s family originally from Kotla Sultan Singh, a village near Majitha in Amritsar district of Punjab, India. Rafi, was famous in his family with his nickname was Pheeko . Father of Rafi moved to Lahore in 1935 . He was the second eldest of six brothers born to Hajji Ali Mohammad.  His first performance on public at the age of 13 .

Personal Life

Rafi married two time ; first marriage was with his cousin; Bashira . The marriage ended when his first wife refused to live in India following the killing of her parents during the riots of the Partition of India and moved to Lahore, Pakistan.Rafi had four sons and three daughters; his first son Saeed was from his first marriage.

Singing career in other languages

He sang around 7,405 songs in many languages. He sang many other languages of India like Konkani, Bhojpuri, Odia, Punjabi, Bengali, Marathi, Sindhi, Kannada, Gujarati, Telugu, Magahi, Maithili and Urdu. Apart from Indian languages, he also sang songs in English, Farsi, Arabic, Sinhalese, Creole and Dutch.Rafi sang several hit songs in Chris Perry’s Konkani album Golden Hits with Lorna Cordeiro.Rafi recorded Hindi songs in English on 7″ release in 1968. He also sang a song in Creole . Rafi recorded two English albums as well. One of them is Pop Hits.

Death

Mohammed Rafi died at 10:25 pm on 31 July 1980, following a massive heart attack. Rafi’s last song was for the movie Aas Paas, which he had recorded with Laxmikant-Pyarelal.The last song of Rafi was “Shaam Phir Kyun Udaas Hai Dost / Tu Kahin Aas Paas Hai Dost”.