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Eurovision winner Jørgen Ingmann died

22 March 2015 at 22:50 CET

The 1963 Eurovision Song Contest produced a controversial result; after all the votes had been cast, the Norwegian jury had to be called again at the end of the voting and gave a decisevely different result than the first time around, giving Denmark its first victory.

The first nordic winners

Denmark became the first nordic country to win the Eurovision Song Contest. The winning song was Dansevise, performed by Grethe and Jørgen Ingmann (pictured below). The couple got married in 1956 and divorced in 1975. Sadly Grethe died in 1990 and yesterday, 25 years later, Jørgen also passed away.



A successful career

Jørgen Ingmann was born on the 26th of April 1925 in Copenhagen, Denmark. He first worked with jazz violinist Svend Asmussen in the 1940s and beginning of the 1950s. Then he switched to Jørgen Ingmann & His Guitar, the stage name under which he recorded Apache in 1961. The song was a massive success in America, peaking at #1 in Canada and #2 in the US Billboard pop singles chart.

Other hits for Ingmann, especially in Germany, include Anna, Pepe, Violetta, Drina Marsch, Tequila and Zorba The Greek.

It was as a member of the duet Grethe & Jørgen Ingmann, where Grethe was the singer and Jørgen played the guitar, that he won the 1963 Eurovision Song Contest representing Denmark with Dansevise (Dance Ballad) written by Otto Francker and Sejr Volmer-Sørensen.