(b Delhi, 22 July 1923; d Detroit, 27 Aug 1976). Indian film actor, playback singer and recording artist. Mukesh's singing career began in 1940 when a respected actor and distant relative, Motilal, brought him to Bombay after hearing him sing at his sister's wedding in Delhi. Motilal initially supported Mukesh, providing accommodation in his house and arranging vocal training. Mukesh's first film role was as the hero in National Studios' Hindi movie Nirdosh (1941), in which he sang his first film song as an actor-singer, ‘Dil hi bujha hua’. Despite the film's box-office failure he spent two more years working as an actor-singer for Ranjit Movietone. In 1945 he sang his first playback song, ‘Badariya baras gai us par’, for Ranjit's film Murti, and in the same year he recorded the song ‘Dil jalta hai to jalne de’ by the music director Anil Biswas for Paheli nazar, which became a big success. Motilal further assisted Mukesh in his love marriage to a Gujarati girl in 1946.
By the late 1940s and early 50s all the major Hindi film music directors – including Anil Biswas, S.D. Burman, Madan Mohan, Naushad, Roshan and Shankar-Jaikishen – were inviting Mukesh to sing for their film song recordings. In 1951 Mukesh sang playback songs by the music director duo Shankar and Jaikishen for the actor Raj Kapoor in Awara and this enormously successful film began a partnership between Mukesh's voice and Raj Kapoor's screen image that lasted for the remainder of Mukesh's life.
Mukesh turned his focus to acting once again in the mid-1950s, playing the hero in such films as Mashuka (1953) and Anuraag (1956), but his singing proved more successful than his film acting. Mukesh thus returned to his playback career and recorded a string of popular song hits in Madhumati (1958), Anari (1959) and Jis desh men ganga behti hai (1960).
In addition to some 900 film songs, Mukesh recorded approximately 90 non-film songs in Hindi and Gujarati, including ghazals, gits and bhajans. He won the Filmfare award for Best Male Playback Singer in 1959, 1970, 1972 and 1976, and was on one of his concert tours of the USA when he died.
H. Raghuwanshi: Mukesh git kosh [Encyclopedia of Mukesh’s songs] (Surat, 1985)
D. Raheja and J. Kothari: ‘Mukesh’, The Hundred Luminaries of Hindi Cinema (Bombay, 1996), 67
ALISON ARNOLD