Kamal Barot was born on 18th November 1938 in South Africa. Her childhood was spent there. She basically belonged to a Gujarati family. She was very fond of musi since her childhood. She was a huge fan of
Lata Mageshkar. She came to Bombay to try her luck in placback singing. After initial struggle she got to meet the noted music composer
C Ramchandra. He gave her a chance in the film Sharda for the song ' Zara dheere bol..' apart from Kamal,
Asha Bhosle,
Shamshad Begum and Chandbala too gave their voice to the song.
Even after this initial break she failed to get any work. She tried her best but nobody was ready to give this newcomer a chance. She, finally, met composer duo,
Kalyanji Anandji. The composers were impressed with her voice and they invited her to render her voice for the song 'Akeli Chhod ke na zana..' in the film Madari, and, 'Dil leke jaate ho kahan..' in the film, O tera Kya Kehna. The fomer was a duet with none other than
Lata Mangeshkar and the latter was a duet wth Subir Sen. Both of these songs became very popular and she was finally noticed by others as well.
More work came her way. Roshan gave her a chance in Barsaat Ki Raat, a duet with
Suman Kalyanpur. The song was 'Garjat barsat saawan aayyo re...'. She got to sing a duet with asha Bhosle in Gharana for the composer
Ravi. This song became immensly popular, even today it is remembered fondly. The song was ' Dadi amma dadi amma maan jaao..'.
In 1961,
Chitragupt, offered her a song for his film Ramu Dada. Kamal sang it with all her heart, "Suna hai jabse hai mausam pyar ke kaabil..'. By this time her innocent voice was very popular but she wasn't getting enough songs to sing. In the coming year the debutant music director duo
Laxmikant Pyarelal, gave her a duet with
Lata Mangeshkar for the film Parasmani. The song was a massive hit and it is still considered as her biggest hit. The song was 'Hansta hua noorani chehra..'
Irony was that most of the songs that came her way were either duet or ensembles. Nevertheless, Kamal sang around 140 plus songs for over 100 films. Her duets with
Mukesh became very popular. They together have sung songs like "Chand Kaisa Hoga" from Rocket Girl, "Hum Bhi Kaho Gaye" from Madam Zorro.
She also released a collection of private songs with HMV.
Kalyanji Anandji composed the music.
