Black History Month - Winifred Atwell

Black History Month: 2 October 2020

 

Winifred Atwell was born in Tunapuna in Trinidad and Tobago in 1914. Atwell left Trinidad in the early 1940s and travelled to the United States to study with Alexander Borovsky and, in 1946, moved to London, where she had gained a place at the Royal Academy of Music. However, in order to finance this initiative, she worked during the evenings at London's clubs playing piano rags. This did not hinder her, however, as she became the first female pianist to be awarded the academy's highest grading for musicianship.

 

Winifred Atwell soon became an accomplished pianist who was idolised by the British public throughout the 1950s. By this time, her popularity had spread nationally. She went on to become the first black person to have a number-one hit in the UK Singles Chart and is still the only female instrumentalist to do so. She signed a record contract with Decca in 1952, and her sales were soon 30,000 discs a week. She was by far the biggest selling pianist of her time, selling over 20 million records. Atwell is also the only holder of two gold and two silver discs for piano music in Britain and was the first black artist in the UK to sell a million records. Her music also worked well on TV where she made regular appearances. However, arguably, Atwell's peak was the second half of the 1950s, during which she played three Royal Variety Performances, appeared in every capital city in Europe, and played for over twenty million people. Towards the end of her famed career in 1969, she was awarded Trinidad and Tobago's national award, the Gold Hummingbird Medal, for her achievements in music.

 

Want to find out more about Winifred Atwell? Click here for more information, or here for a video of her playing the piano to 'The Black and White Rag'.