Puthli was born into a Hindu family on February 4, 1945. Her father was a businessman, and her mother was a homemaker.[3] They had fought in the Indian independence movement and owned Bombay Woollen Mills.[4] Her aunt is Indian freedom fighter Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay.[5]
Like many upper-middle-class Hindu children at the time, she attended English-speakingCatholic schools.[6] Puthli began training at an early age in Indian classical music and opera. She listened to jazz and pop music on the radio, which led to her interest in fusion.[7] At thirteen, she won a contest in which she sang "Malagueña". The victory encouraged her to begin improvising with a jazz band at local tea dances. Ved Mehta described her singing in his book Portrait of India.[8] She went to a university in Mumbai.[9]
Puthli, who had studied Bharatanatyam and Odissi, was able to make her way backstage and secure an audition in New York for the Martha Graham School's modern jazz dance course when the American modern dancer Martha Graham's dance troupe visited India on tour.[4] However, she lacked a passport and would have to audition in New York. Her friend who worked as a flight attendant for British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) informed her one day that they were conducting interviews for potential future hiring. After meeting the general manager, Puthli received an immediate job offer.[4] "I couldn’t get the scholarship unless I went to America to audition, and I couldn't get to America without a scholarship," she recalled.[4] She accepted the job in order to obtain a passport and for her training, she spent two months in London, where she later recalled she "would get to hear real jazz".
After resigning and moving to New York in 1969, she succeeded in her dancing audition and was awarded a one-year scholarship at the Martha Graham School.[4] Puthli portrayed Salome in a production of "Jesus: A Passion Play for Americans," which was filmed by WGBH in Boston and televised nationally in March 1970.[10]
As an ambassador of the Tea Council, Puthli toured the United States in 1970, inviting young artists to participate in a competition the council called a "search for the new sound."[11][12]
In 1970, John H. Hammond at Columbia had read Ved Mehta's portrait of her in Jazz in Bombay.[7] After hearing a rough demo, he signed her to CBS Records. Hammond sent her to audition for avant-garde jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman, who was looking for a singer for his album Science Fiction (1972).[13] For the album, Puthli sang on two songs, "What Reason Could I Give" and "All My Life".[7] For her work on Science Fiction, she shared the DownBeat Critics' Poll award for Best Female Jazz Vocalist.[14]
She continued acting with a lead role in Merchant Ivory's Savages (1972), which was screened at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival and banned in her homeland.[16] Her popularity grew in Europe, where she signed a record deal with CBS.[18] Her music reflected her interest in pop, rock, soul, and funk. She gravitated toward the glam world of Elton John and T. Rex. Her debut Asha Puthli (1973) was produced by Del Newman, and it included cover versions of songs by JJ Cale and Bill Withers. She hired Pierre LaRoche (makeup designer for David Bowie and Freddie Mercury) and photographer Mick Rock to shoot the cover.[19] The album included a disco version of "I Am a Song" by Neil Sedaka.[20]
Her third solo album, The Devil is Loose (1976), was called an instant classic by The New York Times. Music critic Robert Palmer called her singing "extraordinary".[21] Thom Jurek of AllMusic called it " a masterpiece of snakey, spaced-out soul and pre-mainstream disco."[22]
Puthli interviewed Gayatri Devi, the Maharani of Jaipur, for Warhol's Interview magazine in 1977.[23]
Puthli's music never quite found a place in the American mainstream, despite having sold well in Europe. In the 1980s, she went into semi-retirement. She sang on Hey Diwani, Hey Diwani by Dum Dum Project in 2001 and Asana Vol. 3 by Bill Laswell in 2003. In 2005, she returned to the UK charts with "Looking Glass" from the album Fear of Magnetism by Stratus.
In 2020, she was a featured collaborator on Italian singer Gabriel Grillotti's single "Je Crois C'est Ça L'amour."[25]
In 2021, British independent label Mr Bongo Records reissued her 1976 album The Devil is Loose, and followed it up with a 20-track anthology in 2022.[4]
On July 23, 2025, Puthli once again headlined Central Park Summerstage in New York City.
Personal life
In 1970, as her US student visa was about to expire, Puthli approached a man outside the Museum of Modern Art in New York and proposed marriage.[12] The man, an abstract painter named George Stillwaggon, agreed, but he was a "self-confessed homosexual," and they did not consummate their marriage.[26] She later married Marc Goldschmidt, and they had a son born in February 1975 before their divorce in 1981.[4][16]
↑ Frank, Josh, and Charlie Buckholtz. In Heaven Everything Is Fine: The Unsolved Life of Peter Ivers and the Lost History of New Wave Theatre. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008, p. 80.
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