Bhatti was born in Gujarat on 12 January 1928 in
a Punjabi family.
In December 1948, he moved to Lahore to study law and initially stayed at Mao
College hostel in Lahore. A few months
after his arrival in Lahore, he did his first performance on stage in the YMCA
Hall, Lahore. After his YMCA auditorium performance, Bhatti accompanied Ijaz
Gilani Radio Pakistan Lahore where he
met and became a formal pupil of Master Niaz Hussain Shami, a composer
then working for Radio Pakistan in Lahore. It was his association with and
training under Master Niaz Hussain Shami, which facilitated Bhatti's
participation in regular radio programs as a singer. He sometimes used to
accept character roles in plays broadcast by the Lahore station of Radio
Pakistan. Rafi Peer, a play- writer, asked him to be the 'hero' in his
play Akhiyan (Eyes).
Bhatti was introduced to composer Ghulam Ahmad Chishti
by Master Shami in 1949, who offered him an opportunity to record a few songs
in producer-director Nazir Ahmad Khan film Pheeray (1949). After this film's popularity, Bhatti
became an almost overnight celebrity . Producer-director Nazir offered Bhatti
Sahib the leading role in his Punjabi film Heer (1955) against Swarn Lata
He was the first superstar playback singer of Pakistan after
its independence in 1947. His career spanned almost five decades. In 1997, he
suffered an attack of paralysis, which impaired his speech and kept him
bed-ridden for most of the time thereafter. A few days before his death, the
71-year-old artiste was taken to his native home Gujrat, where on 31 May 1999,
he died and was buried next to his parents.
Inayat Hussain Bhatti father
