NEW DELHI: Asha Bhosle's voice shaped Bollywood music for eight decades and she credited much of it to her long-time collaborator OP Nayyar, with whom she later parted ways but never quite stop acknowledging.
Nayyar, the maverick composer who chose not to work with Bhosle's elder sister, the more widely known Lata Mangeshkar, did not just record songs with Bhosle but played a key role in shaping her artistic identity.
This story is detailed in author Raju Bharatan's book "Asha Bhosle: A Musical Biography".
Bhosle, who died on Sunday at the age of 92, credited Nayyar for getting her rid of her "Lata phobia".
"Say what you like about the man but he made me. What was I in front of Lata Mangeshkar until Nayyar saab took me in hand? He rid me of my Lata phobia," Bhosle is quoted as saying in the book.
The phobia was real. Through the early 1950s, most music directors composed with Mangeshkar's voice as their reference point due to her unique pitch and varied range. Bhosle, younger and less established, was expected to follow.
"In the case of most music directors, they would ask me to sing at a higher pitch and scale ," she recalled.
Nayyar, who died at the age of 81 in 2007, saw something that the others missed.
"He used to point out that I had a very strong and smooth low register and also a very long breath.He would often use this quality, especially in the slow, sad and melancholic numbers," she said in the book.
Rather than pushing her toward Mangeshkar's strength, Nayyar composed music that was more attuned to Bhosle's style of singing. The results defined an era. From the foot-tapping "Leke pehla pehla pyaar", the 1956 "C.I.D." chartbuster featuring Bhosle alongside Mohammed Rafi and Shamshad Begum, to the sublime "Bahut shukriya badi meherbani", the Rafi-Bhosle dream duet from "Ek Musafir Ek Haseena" (1962), Nayyar gave the pair some of Hindi cinema's most enduring melodies.
The hauntingly melancholic "Main shaayad tumhaare liye ajnabi hoon" and the evocative "Yehi woh jagah hai", both from "Yeh Raat Phir Na Aayegi" (1966), showcased what Nayyar could draw from Bhosle's voice at its most expressive.
Among Bhosle's personal favourites was "Jaadoogar saanwariyaa" from "Dhake Ki Malmal" (1957). She called it a "truly beautiful song".
Another favourite was "Raaton ko chori chori" from "Mohabbat Zindagi Hai" (1966).
Where other composers were strict and expected singers to reproduce compositions exactly as it is, Nayyar actively invited Bhosle to stray.
"Often, to enjoy the fun at my expense, he would even suggest: 'Now you sing the next stanza the way you would like to,'" Bhosle recalled in the book.
"This was real fun and a challenge. In my experience the majority of music directors stopped singers from improvisation. But never Nayyar saab."
He also never let her feel inadequate about her Urdu.
"Nayyar saab had a very keen ear for the words of the song. He is very knowledgeable about Urdu and would try his utmost to ensure that every word in the song would stand out clearly," she said.
What makes this portrait of Nayyar even more striking is what Bhosle said about him as a performer.
She placed him among an esteemed group of composers, alongside Madan Mohan, Roshan and S D Burman, who were "outstanding" singers in their own right.
"In fact, he used to be an outstanding singer -- even better than the artistes who rendered his songs for playback," she said.
"That helped us singers to latch on, immediately, to the stress and the accents which gave the song its identity."
And yet, by her own admission, neither she nor Rafi could fully match what they heard.
"I would even go to the extent of saying that neither Mohammed Rafi nor I could do cent per cent justice to the way Nayyar saab composed and sang his songs," Bhosle said.
"Small subtle pointing of words; a delicate bridge that was coloured with the feelings of the song -- I honestly feel that all of us never exceeded 80 per cent of what Nayyarsaab expected from us."
The duo later became estranged but musical record remains untouched by personal history.
"In my long career, I have sung with all the composers who had their distinct styles and excelled in their own branch of specializing. But there were just a few trendsetters. They not only brought in a different individual style but also influenced others to follow it. Nayyar was one such revolutionary trendsetter. He had many imitators but he remained the original," Bhosle said.