Grethe Ingmann (born Clemmensen; 17 June 1938 – 18 August 1990) was a Danish singer. She started her career at 17, when she temporarily performed as a singer of the Malihini Hawaiians pop quartet. Soon after she sang with the Danish guitarist Jørn Grauengaard and his trio. In 1955 she met her future husband, guitarist

Jørgen Ingmann Jørgen Ingmann (born Jørgen Ingmann Pedersen; 26 April 1925 – 21 March 2015) was a Danish jazz and pop guitarist from Copenhagen. He was popular in Europe and had a wider international hit in 1961 with his version of "Apache". He and his w ...

. The couple married in 1956 and performed as the duo Grethe og Jørgen Ingmann. Together they won the Eurovision Song Contest 1963 representing Denmark with the jazz waltz " Dansevise" (Dancing tune) with music by Otto Francker and lyrics by Sejr Volmer-Sørensen. It was the first entry performed by a duo to win the Contest and also the first Scandinavian winner. In 1965 she entered the German Schlager Contest with the song " Sommerwind". She dropped out in the preliminaries, but the song's English version, written by

Johnny Mercer John Herndon Mercer (November 18, 1909 – June 25, 1976) was an American lyricist, songwriter, and singer, as well as a record label executive who co-founded Capitol Records with music industry businessmen Buddy DeSylva and Wallichs Music Cit ...

in 1966 and sung by

Frank Sinatra Francis Albert Sinatra (; December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Honorific nicknames in popular music, Nicknamed the "Chairman of the Board" and "Ol' Blue Eyes", he is regarded as one of the Time 100: The Most I ...

, became an international hit. Grethe and Jørgen Ingmann continued their musical career until they divorced in 1975. As a solo singer, Grethe participated in several Danish pre-selections for the Eurovision Song Contest, unsuccessfully. Notably, in 1979 she entered the Dansk Melodi Grand Prix with

Bjarne Liller Bjarne Bent Rønne Pedersen, known as Bjarne Liller (25 September 1935 – 6 September 1993), was a Danish jazz musician and singer-songwriter. Biography Liller was born on Vesterbro, Copenhagen. He got his breakthrough as a banjo The banjo ...

and the song "Alt er skønt", which tied for equal first at the end of the voting but placed second after a re-vote. The couple remarried in the 1980s. Grethe died of liver cancer on 18 August 1990, aged 52, becoming the first Eurovision winner to die.

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* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ingmann, Grethe 1938 births 1990 deaths 20th-century Danish women singers Eurovision Song Contest winners Danish pop singers Dansk Melodi Grand Prix winners People from Frederikssund Municipality Musicians from the Capital Region of Denmark