Kishore Kumar (4 August 1929 – 13 October 1987) was an Indian film playback singer, actor, lyricist, composer, producer, director, and screenwriter.He is considered one of the most successful playback singers of the Hindi film industry. Apart from Hindi, he sang in many Indian languages including Bengali, Marathi, Assamese, Gujarati, Kannada, Bhojpuri, Malayalam, Odia, and Urdu. He has also sung in private albums in several languages especially in Bengali which are noted as all time classics. He won 8 Filmfare Awards for Best Male Playback Singer and holds the record for winning the most Filmfare Awards in that category. He was awarded the “Lata Mangeshkar Award” by the Madhya Pradesh government and from that year onwards, the Madhya Pradesh Government initiated a new award called the “Kishore Kumar Award” for contributions to Hindi cinema.
Kishore Kumar was born in a Bengali Ganguly family in Khandwa, Central Provinces (now in Madhya Pradesh) as Abhas Kumar Ganguly. His father Kunjalal Ganguly (Gangopadhyay) was a lawyer and his mother Gouri Devi came from a wealthy Bengali family. Kunjalal Gangopadhyaya was invited by the Kamavisadar Gokhale family of Khandwa to be their personal lawyer. Kishore was the youngest of four siblings, the other three were Ashok (the eldest), Sati Devi, and Anoop. While Kishore was still a child, his brother Ashok became a Bollywood actor. Later, Anoop also ventured into cinema with Ashok’s help. Spending time with his brothers, Kishore became interested in films and music. He became a fan of singer-actor K. L. Saigal—whom he considered his guru, and tried to emulate his singing style.He graduated from Christian College, Indore.
After Ashok Kumar became a star of Hindi films, the Ganguly family visited Mumbai regularly. Abhas Kumar changed his name to Kishore and started his cinema career as a chorus singer at Bombay Talkies, where his brother worked. Kumar’s first film appearance was in Shikari (1946), in which his brother Ashok played the lead role. Music director Khemchand Prakash gave Kumar a chance to sing “Marne ki duayen kyon mangu” for the film Ziddi (1948). After this, Kumar was offered many other assignments, but he was not very serious about a film career.In 1949, he settled in Mumbai. Kumar played the hero in the Bombay Talkies film Andolan (1951), directed by Phani Majumdar. Although he got some acting assignments with the help of his brother, he was more interested in becoming a singer. Ashok wanted Kumar to be an actor like him.
(Ref:www.whatshot.in & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kishore_Kumar)