Una Winifred Atwell (27 February or 27 April 1910 or 1914 – 28 February 1983) was a pianist and composer born in the country of Trinidad who migrated to Britain and who enjoyed great popularity in Britain and Australia from the 1950s with a series of boogie-woogie and ragtime hits, selling over 20 million records. She was the first black artist to have a number-one hit in the UK singles chart and had the first piano instrumental to reach number one in the UK singles chart, with "Let's Have Another Party" in 1954, and as of 2023, remains the only female instrumentalist to do so.

Biography

Childhood

Atwell was born in Tunapuna in the British colony of Trinidad and Tobago. She and her parents lived in Jubilee Street. Her family owned a pharmacy and she trained as a pharmacist herself to degree level and was expected to join the family business. She played the piano from a young age and achieved considerable popularity locally.

Leaving Trinidad

Atwell left Trinidad in the early 1940s and travelled to the United States to study with Alexander Borovsky.

On 6 October 1945, it was announced that "the noted British pianist" had left for England where she would broadcast for the BBC on Tuesdays and Thursdays. In London, she gained a place at the Royal Academy of Music where she completed her musical studies. She became the first female pianist to be awarded the academy's highest grading for musicianship. To support her studies, she played rags at London clubs and theatres. From those modest beginnings in variety she went on to top the bill at the London Palladium. She said later, "I starved in a garret to get onto concert stages".

Life in the UK

On 21 October 1946, Atwell appeared on BBC TV programme Stars in Your Eyes, which was quickly followed by several radio appearances on the BBC Light Programme. In January 1947, she headed the bill of Come to the Show at the Empire Theatre, Belfast, where she was billed as "radio's most versatile pianist". Frequent radio appearances continued, including the well-known Variety Bandbox show. She appeared on the variety stages too, sometimes with another pianist called Donald Thorne.

Atwell attracted attention with an unscheduled appearance at the Casino Theatre, where she substituted for an ill star. She caught the eye of entrepreneur Bernard Delfont, who put her on a long-term contract in 1948. Atwell was championed by popular disc jockey Jack Jackson, who introduced her to Decca Records promotions manager Hugh Mendl. Mendl launched his career as a staff producer at Decca by producing Atwell's recordings. She released a number of discs for Decca in 1951 that were well received. "Jezebel" sold well, but it was another disc that catapulted her to huge popularity in the UK. A complex arrangement called "Cross Hands Boogie" was released to show her virtuoso rhythmic technique, but it was the B-side, a 1900s tune written by George Botsford called "Black and White Rag", that was to become a radio standard. The disc sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.

"Black And White Rag" started a craze for her honky-tonk style of playing. Her hands were insured with Lloyd's of London for £40,000, the policy stipulating that she was never to wash dishes. "Britannia Rag" and "Jubilee Rag". Her signature "Black and White Rag" became famous again in the 1970s as the theme of the BBC snooker programme Pot Black,

Atwell's peak was in the second half of the 1950s, during which her concerts drew standing-room-only crowds in Europe and Australasia. She played three Royal Variety Performances, appeared in every capital city in Europe, and played for over twenty million people. At a private party for Queen Elizabeth II, she was called back for an encore by the monarch herself, who requested "Roll Out the Barrel". Atwell became a firm television favourite and had her own series in Britain. The first of them was Bernard Delfont Presents The Winifred Atwell Show. It ran for ten episodes on the new ITV network from 21 April to 23 June 1956, and the BBC picked up the series the following year. On a third triumphal tour of Australia, she recorded her own Australian television series, screened in 1960–1961. During her career she earned a fortune, and her fame would have extended to the US but for the obstacles caused by racial segregation. Her breakthrough appearance was to have been on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956, but on arrival in America she was confronted with problems of selling the show in the South with a British-sounding black woman. Her appearance was never recorded.

Keith Emerson noted her influence on his playing in an interview: "I've always been into ragtime. In England—and I'm sure Rick Wakeman would concur—we loved Winifred Atwell, a fantastic honky-tonk and ragtime player."

Later life

Atwell bought an apartment on the beach front in Flight Deck, an apartment complex in Collaroy in Sydney, as a jumping-off base for her worldwide performance commitments. She was a member of the Moby Dick Surf Club at Whale Beach where she performed regularly in support of the surf club. Enjoying the affection of the public, she was nevertheless keenly aware of prejudice and injustice and was outspoken about racism in Australia. She always donated her services in a charity concert on Sundays, the proceeds going to orphanages and needy children. She spoke out against the Third World conditions endured by Aboriginal Australians, which made headlines during an outback tour of the country in 1962. Dismissing racism as a factor in her own life, she said she felt she was "spoiled very much by the public". She left her estate to the Australian Guide Dogs for the Blind and a small amount to her goddaughter. However, a cousin of Lew Levisohn contested Atwell's will and is reported to have been granted $30,000 from her estate.

Atwell also created headlines in the 1960s with her dieting, slimming from , using what would today be called a protein diet.

In 1978, she appeared on Australian TV's This Is Your Life. At the end of the show, she played a few bars of "Black and White Rag" using her "other" piano, which had been in retirement for many years.

Though a dynamic stage personality, Atwell was known to be modest, shy and soft-spoken. Eloquent and intellectual, she was well read and informed about issues and current events. She also had an interest in cricket. She was also a devout Catholic, and played the organ for her parish church.

Atwell often returned to her native Trinidad and, on one occasion, she bought a house in Saint Augustine, which she adored and later renamed Winvilla. It was later turned into the Pan Pipers Music School by one of her students, Louise McIntosh. In 1968, Atwell recorded Ivory and Steel, an album of standards and classics, with the Pan Am Jet North Stars Steel Orchestra (director/arranger Anthony Williams), and supported musical scholarships in the West Indies. In the early 1980s, her sense of loss following her husband's death made her consider returning to Trinidad to live, but she found the weather too hot.

Atwell suffered a stroke in 1980. In 1981, she officially retired on The Mike Walsh Show, then Australia's highest-rating television variety programme. She categorically stated that she would retire and not return as a public performer, and that she had had an excellent career. Her last TV performance was "Choo Choo Samba", followed by a medley of "Black and White Rag" and "Twelfth Street Rag". Her only non-private performances from that point were as an organist in her parish church at Narrabeen.

Death

In 1983, following an electrical fire that destroyed her Narrabeen home, she suffered a heart attack and died while staying with friends in Seaforth. She is buried beside husband, Lew Levisohn, in Northern Rivers Memorial Park, South Gundurimba in northern New South Wales, just outside Lismore. She has a piano-shaped headstone that was paid for by Elton John.

Awards

In 1969, Atwell was awarded Trinidad and Tobago's national award, the Gold Hummingbird Medal, for her achievements in music.

Legacy

Elton John, writing in his 2019 memoir Me, described Atwell as one of his musical heroes.

In November 2020, a Nubian Jak Community Trust black plaque honouring Atwell was unveiled at the former site of a hair salon she owned in Chaucer Road, Brixton, south London. The Winifred Atwell Salon had opened in 1956, the year after Carmen Maingot became the first black woman to open a salon in London, in South Kensington (with a basement room that featured decor by fellow Trinidadian artist Althea McNish). After Atwell's Brixton salon was destroyed by fire, she opened up a second store in Mayfair.

In 2025, English Heritage decided that Atwell was to be awarded a commemorative Blue Plaque. On 1 October 2025, outside her former home at 18 Bourdon Street, Mayfair, the plaque was unveiled by Jools Holland, with YolanDa Brown among others who spoke in tribute to Atwell as "a dazzling performer and a true trailblazer".

Discography

Albums

  • Double Seven – Seven Rags Seven Boogies (1956), UK London Records
  • Chartbusters – Winifred Atwell, Music for Leisure

Charting singles

  • "Britannia Rag" (1952) – UK No. 5
  • "Coronation Rag" (1953) – UK No. 5
  • "Flirtation Waltz" (1953) – UK No. 10
  • "Let's Have a Party" (1953) – UK No. 2
  • "Rachmaninoff's 18th Variation on a Theme by Paganini (The Story of Three Loves)" (1954) – UK No. 9
  • "Let's Have Another Party" (1954) – UK No. 1
  • "Let's Have a Ding Dong" (1955) – UK No. 3
  • "The Poor People of Paris" (1956) – UK No. 1
  • "Port-au-Prince" (1956) – UK No. 18
  • "Left Bank (C'Est A Hamburg)" (1956) – UK No. 14
  • "Make It a Party" (1956) – UK No. 7
  • "Let's Rock 'N' Roll" (1957) – UK No. 24
  • "Let's Have a Ball" (1957) – UK No. 4
  • "Moonlight Gambler" (1957) – US No. 16 (Music Vendor)
  • "Dawning" (1958) – US No. 95 (Music Vendor)
  • "The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll" (1959) – UK No. 24
  • "Piano Party" (1959) – UK No. 10