Shri.Jagjit Singh was born in Sri Ganganagar, Rajasthan. His family members used to call him as "Jeet". He was born in a big family and had four sisters and two brothers.

Jagjit Singh is accredited with bringing the ghazal genre, which was previously restricted to the elite classes, to the masses. His music direction can be seen to be pioneering in changing the sound layout by adding more Western instruments while mostly retaining the traditional orchestra (which includes a tablaa, dholak, bongos, sitar, sarod, santoor, flute, and harmonium, and a couple of string instruments). Jagjit Singh was also nicknamed as "Ghazaljeet Singh".

Jagjit Singh is accredited with finding many playback singers in Bollywood in modern times like Kumar Sanu, Abhijeet, Talat Aziz.

Jagjit Singh voiced his opinion against artists from Pakistan being allowed to sing in India, when Pakistan refused to reciprocate the gesture.

In addition to cultivating his own successful career, Jagjit Singh was involved in guiding many new, talented singers such as Abhijeet, Talat Aziz, Ghanshyam Vaswani, Ashok Khosla, Siza Roy and Vinod Sehgal. He also lent active support to several philanthropic endeavors such as the Library at St. Mary's (Mumbai), Bombay Hospital, CRY, and ALMA (an organization that adopts under-privileged students for further education and development).

Recipient of Padma Bhushan award in the year 2003, he sang in several languages including Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi and Nepali.

Jagjit Singh's wife Smt.Chitra Singh was also a popular Gazal Singer and had performed with him on many occasions.

Shri.Jagjit Singh passed away peacefully at 8:10 A.M. on Monday, 10th October 2011 in Leelavati hospital, Mumbai.