Kishore Kumar - The Maverick Artist

Kishore Kumar was actually born to sing. He sang from his heart, won millions of hearts and became a legend without any formal education in music and singing. His death, just one day after he recorded his last song also speaks volumes on his heart to heart relationship with songs.

Born to Kunjalal Ganguly and Gauri Devi he spent his childhood in Khandwa (Madhya Pradesh). As the youngest child in the family of four children of lawyer Kunjalal Ganguly, he studied in Bombay Bazar School and later studied for about one and a half year at Christen College in Indore. He moved to Bombay (now Mumbai) without completing his education and joined his elder brother.

Kishore's elder brother Ashok Kumar was 19 year his senior and was big film star in Bombay.

Ashok Kumar helped Kishore to get acting assignments as he did not have much faith in his singing capability.

As Kishore did not have any formal training in music, he learned on his own by singing songs of K L Saigal. He was a big fan of K L Saigal. Once he got a chance to sing in front of Saigal who advised him to work towards removing 'sharir dosha' from his singing, he also gave him tips on how to move his body while singing.

Though Kishore acted in films but he did not like acting. His heart was in music and that is what he wanted to do. Once he told Ashok Kumar 'acting is fake, music is real as it comes from the heart'.

Music director Khemchand Prakash gave Kishore his first chance to sing a solo song 'Marne ki duayen kyon mangu' for the film Ziddi in 1948. Over all Kishore recorded 2905 songs out of which 2825 were for films. He sang 2648 songs in Hindi, 154 in Bengali, 8 in Gujarati, 3 each in Marathi & Oriya, and 1 each in Assamese, English, Kannada, Malayalam and Punjabi. Out of 80 non film songs recorded by Kishore, 67 were in Bengali and 13 in Hindi.

While Kishore debut film as an actor was Shikari but as the lead hero his first film was Andolan. Kishore acted in 102 films including self production wherein he was also music director, producer, director, script writer and dialogue writer.


Kishore married four times. His first marriage was with Ruma Devi at age of 22, she was a Bengali actress. They had a son - Amit Kumar - who also became a famous singer, they were married for eight year from 1950 till 1958. Second time he married Madhubala who was a big film star. They got married in 1960 and marriage lasted till Madhubala's death in 1969. Kishore's third marriage was with Yogeeta Bali who was also a film star, they were married for about two years between 1976 and 1978. In 1980 Kishore married Leena Chandavarkar again a film star and was married to her till his death. They had a son - Sumit Kumar - who is an aspiring singer.

Kishore recorded his last song on October 12, 1987 for music director Bappi Lahiri for film 'waqt ki awaz' next day he died. He had a peaceful death with his family around him at his home. This day was also birth day of Ashok Kumar, who never celebrated his birthday after 1987.

Watch out for stories behind some of Kishore's songs