Handsome, debonair and soft-spoken, Talat Mahmood was one of India's foremost singing artistes. Born at Lucknow in 1924, this gifted artiste had his early education in Lucknow and Aligarh, and his musical training at the celebrated Morris College of Music in Lucknow where he did a three years' course before graduation. However, Talat did not ape his idol for too long, thanks to the gentle prodding from aunt Mahalqa Begum and Kamal Das Gupta, an extremely talented music director from Calcutta.

He started broadcasting from the stations of All India Radio in 1939, starting at Lucknow, and then expanding to Lahore, Peshawar, Delhi, and others. He established himself as singer of Gazals of Ghalib, Iqbal, Daagh and others. He made his first record for His Master's Voice in 1941 in Calcutta.

During the early part of his singing career, when he was in Calcutta, he sang playback and played minor roles in a number of Hindi and Bengali films. He sang two solos, "jaago musafir jaago" and, "tu sun le matawale" and acted in the movie Raaj Lakshami (1945) produced by M. P. Productions, Calcutta, with music by Robin Chatterji and lyrics by Suresh Chaudhari. These appear to be his first two songs for a Hindi movie. Later, he graduated to play the lead role

opposite Bharati Devi in Sampapti.

He entered Bombay film arena in 1949 with the film Arzoo, music directed by Anil Biswas. The song 'ae dil, mujhe aisi jagah le chal' became an instant hit. The soft, mellifluous voice took the Bombay film world by storm and soon he established a reputation as a top singer, honing his talents under ace composers like Anil Biswas, Sajjad Hussain, Vinod, Naushad, C. Ramchandra, Salil Chowdhury, S. D. Burman, Roshan, Madan Mohan, Shankar-Jaikishan, Khayyam and O. P. Nayar, to name a few.

He lent his voice to more than a thousand film songs, almost all becoming hits of the time, and also acted in a number of films, that include Dil-e-Nadan, Sone Ki Chidiya, Lala Rookh, Ek Gaon Ki Kahani, Waris and Raftar. In between his film and radio work this busy artiste found time to travel all over the country on concert tours.

Talat Mahmood had an extremely polished voice with lot of expression in it and it is this quality that made him eminently suitable for the rendering of modern romantic songs, film geet and ghazals type. Talat Mahmood went on to achieve the stature of a ghazal icon for whom poets

and music directors alike were eager to compose. They knew his lips had this gift of further refining their composition. And it is no exaggeration to say that his stylized singing have few equals anywhere. The intensity of expression he could infuse into his voice made him the king of ghazal singers. Talat Mahmood was the ghazal original and that all who followed, including himself, were inspired by his style and idiom. He sang at a time when lyrics were unsurpassed in their beauty written by poets like Ghalib, and newer aspirants like Shakeel Badayuni, Majrooh Sultanpuri and Sahir Ludhianvi. Truly was poetry integral to the music that Talat Mahmood made. And it was this intrinsic poetic content in his vocalizing that elevated a mere film song, in his crooning custody, to a near art form. This, combined with a voice so distinctly different, made a combination almost magical

That he was received less than his due from the film industry, can be chalked up as one black mark for the industry to which he brought a rare grace that no one has equaled, for his was a voice that comes once in a lifetime. Legends like him aren't born everyday and when they do their place can't be filled by anybody.

Victim of Parkinson’s disease that he battled a long time, Talat Mahmood who, passed away, quietly, on May 9, 1998 at the age of 74.