Less talked about singers - Part 1

Manhar Udhas

The first time I heard Manhar
was way back in College. Somebody had a record Mukesh ki Yadein and I saw that the collection in that record was superb. It had all the popular hits. After a few spins, I could make out that it was not Mukesh. Checked the cover carefully, somewhere in the corner of the LP was the statement – Sung by Manhar …That was the first time I heard one of these re-sung records…

The next I heard of Manhar was when the Abhiman EP came out – Loote Koi man ke nazar banke mera saathi – what a great song…He followed on in Qurbani with ‘Hum tumhen chaahate he’….Some more good hits followed, one I recall was the Hero song Tu meri janoo hai. I hear he is active and does Gujarati Ghazals etc these days…

Shailendra Singh

This chap just burst into the music scene with his ‘Bobby’ songs; even today ‘Mein shayar to nahin’ is a song that still enthrals the listener. But it was not to be; after a few Rishi kapoor movies and some years of struggling (and an aborted attempt at acting) in the Bollywood rat race, he quietly faded away.

A personal favourite after Mein Shayer is a Shailendra Lata duet – Dariya cha raja from Do Jasoos.

I tried to find out what happened to him post Bobby, Rafoo chakkar….but there are hardly anything written on this guy – I was and still am surprised!!
There are mentions that he came on a Harmony TV program
recently and goofed up the song completely…Ah well, must have been a bad day for him!!

‘Hum tum’ has Rishi kapoor humming the Bobby song; rumour mills state that Shailendra Singh probably re-sang the clip.


Runa Laila

Sultana Chowdhry aka Runa Laila sang probably a handful of Hindi songs, but apparently has over 5000 songs to her credit in 17 languages, did you know that? I used to think that she was born Bangla, but she is Karachi born and stepped into the limelight when her sister developed a sore throat prior to a stage show. Well she purportedly has a Guinness book record for the max songs recorded in a day – at Bombay!! And well, she even had a successful stage show
in Chennai!!!

I can still hum those famous Hindi songs of hers -

Do diwane shahar mein & Tumhe ho na ho mujhko to…from Gharaonda
Ek se badhkar ek zaman he donom anek….title song




Part 2 to cover Bhupinder Singh, Nazia Hassan ; Hemlata

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