Because I mentioned him a lot a couple of posts ago, some people told me they couldn’t recall having seen him in any films, and he popped up prominently when I was viewing my favorite Shamshad Begum songs as well as the new upload of Mirza Sahiban… I have decided to post several favorite songs that either starred or featured Gope. In the last two songs here, he is just an onlooker, but a very distinctive one. For those who don’t know, you can spot him by looking for the heaviest fellow in the clip – who is also often the funniest. But he was a fairly convincing villain, too…
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P.S. Reading a little about Gope, I learned that he was born in Sindh. I looked for Gope performing “Lal Meri Pat,” but alas, no such luck.
Dances on the Footpath 
That’s pretty good selection.
Hmm, I don’t think Lal meri pat was on the popular consciousness before the 70s, when Reshma’s and other versions cropped up.
Thank you, Bawa.
By the way, I know that Noor Jehan’s version of “Lal Meri Pat” for Naghma and Firdous in Dilan Dey Soudey dates back to 1969, but I don’t know of any popular versions from the ’40s or ’50s, especially not any starring Gope. LOL
Nice, Richard! I’d never heard #3 and 4 before, so those were fun discoveries. :-)
Here’s another one, a far cry from the merriment of the usual Gope. This is from the 1950 film Aarzoo:
Thanks, Madhu. Yes, that is very different from the usual Gope, and a little difficult to get used to! I have that film on DVD, but I never watched it all the way through. The song that I always remember is a cheerful song, a spring song with Lata singing for Kamini Kaushal while an admiring Dilip Kumar looks on. I will have to get back to this movie…
That’s a beautiful song Madhu!
The first Laal Meri Pat I heard were Reshma and Runa Laila, and also Narinder Biba. I do know that at a private wedding function in the 70s where Surinder Kaur was singing, a lot of people were requesting her for this song, and she turned them down several times by saying she “never sung other people’s songs” as a rule, but then gave in and of course gave a really good rendition of Laal Meri!