Lal Chand Yamla Jatt was born in 1910 in a chak of the Lyallpur canal colony and came across in 1947. He settled at Ludhiana and became the first Punjabi folk singer with a mass recorded audience.
He sang with the tumbi, one string, and made it the instrument people associate with Punjabi folk music. Das Main Ki Pyar Wichon Khatiya is the song everybody knows.
He recorded for All India Radio and on 78s from the 1950s, performed at village fairs and at the Kila Raipur games, and taught a generation of singers who came to him at Ludhiana.
He was from a Ramgarhia family and made a living as a singer in a period when that was a caste-marked profession with no standing, and he made it respectable enough that others could follow.
Almost every Punjabi folk singer since has recorded one of his songs. He died at Ludhiana in 1991.
The tumbi is a gourd, a stick and a single wire, played with one finger. It carries no melody of its own, only a pulse, so the voice has to do everything, which is why the singers who use it are judged entirely on the voice.
He performed into his seventies, at melas and at the akharas. The radio and film work came late and mattered less to what he was than the fairs did.
Kuldeep Manak, Amar Singh Chamkila and a long line after them worked from what he established. He died in 1991.