The 9th Eurovision Song Contest was held at the Tivolis Koncertsal in Copenhagen on 21st March 1964 and was the ninth Eurovision Song Contest. Italy won the contest for the first time with the song Non Ho L'Eta sung in Italian by 16 year old Gigliola Cinquetti. Cinquetti would be the youngest Eurovision winner until 1986 when 13 year old Belgian singer Sandra Kim won the contest. Cinquetti's was the most crushing victory in the history of the contest to date, scoring three times more points than the second placed which, again, was the UK. She also got the highest score (5 points at that time) from 8 countries, which means 50% of the participants. No winner has so far repeated those figures again.

After the Swiss entry a man trespassed onto the stage holding a banner that read "Boycott Franco & Salazar", this was a political protest against the Spanish and Portuguese dictatorships. Television viewers were shown a shot of the scoreboard until the man was removed from stage and the contest went on. There were 16 participant countries; Sweden did not participate this year because of a boycott by Swedish singers. Portugal made its debut and ended with no points becoming the first country to score null points on its debut. Germany, Switzerland, and Yugoslavia each scored null points for the first time too.

The Netherlands became the first country to send a singer of non-European ancestry, Anneke Grönloh, who was of Indonesian descent (It would take until 1966 before the first black singer, Milly Scott, also of the Netherlands, would appear on Eurovision stage). Spanish group Los TNT were the first group (three of more singers) of the history of the contest.

No video recording of this contest is known to survive. The original was destroyed in a fire at the studios of DR, the Danish Broadcaster, in the 1970s, and, apparently, no other country kept a copy of it. A full audio recording, however, does exist. Some short bits of the winners' reprise video from different TV channels have been found though. This one here is a remarkable work of putting up together those remains of the video and the original recorded radio audio made by the wonderful team of esc-plus.com

See you in Naples for the 10th Eurovision Song Contest in 1965