Zámbó Jimmy / Zambo Jimmy

Born Imre Zambo (the name Jimmy supposedly came from an American sweetheart who couldn't pronounce his name correctly), Zámbó Jimmy rose from obscurity in Budapest's slums to become one of the greatest selling and most controversial figures in modern Hungarian music. After a stint in the communist-controlled children's radio chorus, Jimmy made his way to the U.S., working as a journeyman piano player here and there for a few years before a return to Hungary in the mid-'80s. Upon his return, success came only gradually, with a minor hit or two and a festival appearance now and then. In 1993, he performed a cover song for a Hungarian version of a film soundtrack, which garnered him some serious attention, catapulting him into the career he had been seeking all along. He released albums at a rapid pace, and won Hungarian music awards each year at this point of his career. Nonetheless, Zámbó Jimmy's fame came at a price. His appearance lent itself to a multitude of jokes, and he was perhaps known more for character flaws than for his music at times (he was widely known to be a drunken womanizer packing a gun, and was known to be violently defensive of his stature and ego), and critical success never came. His music was pointedly saccharine, with soft ballads not just the core of his sound, but the whole of his sound (aside from a stray Elvis cover now and then). As a result, critics looked past Zámbó Jimmy in favor of more "serious" artists. Despite the lack of critical success, Jimmy continued to sell records, topping the charts and reaching gold and platinum status repeatedly. In 2001, in a bizarre turn of events, Zámbó Jimmy committed accidental suicide, apparently shooting himself in the head while trying to convince his wife that his gun had no bullets.