Lata Mangeshkar won the Bharat Ratna, the Dadasaheb Phalke award, the French Legion of Honour, five Maharashtra state film awards, three national film awards, and countless other honours and citations, making her easily the most influential Indian film singer of all time, regardless of gender.

That is just one aspect of the legend.
A report in Hindustan Times newspaper by Sachin Kalbag traces her journey in detail.

He wrote: In 1965, when Marathi film legend and later Dadasaheb Phalke award recipient Bhalji Pendharkar wanted to make a movie on the urban-rural conflict amid the rapid transformation of a tumultuous decade, he turned to Lata Mangeshkar to compose its music. The assignment not only required musical genius but also a keen understanding of the scores of Marathi dialects spoken across Maharashtra.

By then, Mangeshkar – already a ‘playback’ singing sensation across Indian languages – had composed music for three Marathi films. It was Pendharkar’s film Saadhi Maansa (Simple Folk) – her fourth – that would become a landmark. Two of its songs – ‘Airanichya deva tula’ and ‘Malachya malamandhi’ – became all-time classics in Maharashtrian households and won innumerable awards.

If you saw the movie, though, you will be forgiven for not knowing that Mangeshkar composed its music. After ‘Ram Ram Pavhna’, her first film as composer in 1960, Mangeshkar preferred the relative anonymity of a male pseudonym. And so, it was Anand Ghan (literally, a cloud of joy) that gave music to Saadhi Maansa and won the state’s best music and best song awards for that year, not Lata Mangeshkar (Anand Ghan’s identity later became a popular question in school quizzes).

Mangeshkar, or Lata Didi as she was fondly called, came from a household that worshipped music. Her father Dinanath Mangeshkar was a towering personality in Marathi theatre. He acted, produced and sang songs in plays that would change the face of Marathi theatre.

Born in September 1929, Lata was the first of a set of siblings – sisters Meena, Asha (Bhosle), and Usha, and brother Hridaynath ruled over Marathi and Hindi film music for decades.