" Mohammed Rafi '' the greatest Playback Singer .

Mohammed Rafi  ( 1924 december 24 - 1980 July 31 ) was an Indian playback singer . He is considered as one of the greatest and most influential singers of the Indian subcontinent .

Rafi was notable for his voice , versatility and range ; his songs were varied from fast peppy numbers to patriotic songs , sad numbers to highly romantic songs, qawwalis , to ghazals and bhajans to classical songs .

He received six filmfare awards and one national film award in 1967 . He was honoured with the Padmashri award by the government of India in 2001 .Rafi was honoured with thre " Best Singer of the Millennium " title by Hero Honda and Stardust magazine . 

He was recorded songs for a thousand hindi films and has sung songs in various regional indian languages as well as foreign languages . He has recorded as many as 7405 songs in many songs in many languages . He has sung in many regional Indian languages including Konkani ,Assamese , Bhojpuri , Odia , Punjabi , Bengali , Sindhi , Marathi , Kannada , Gujarati , Tamil , Telugu , Magahi and Maithili. He also sang songs in many foreign languages including English , Farsi , Arabic , Sinhala , Creole and Dutch .

Saleem P. Chacko .