Winifred Atwell breaking all sorts of records in reaching the top of the pops
As the first Black artist making History by having a No.1 hit in the UK Singles Chart, in its history, Winifred Atwell still holds the record as the only female instrumentalist to do so, to date. Bornin in Trinidad & Tobago, she played the piano from a young age and achieved considerable popularity locally, especially playing for American servicemen at the Air Force base on the islands, before enjoying great popularity in Britain and Australia with a series of boogie-woogie and ragtime hits, selling over 20 million records.
It was while playing at the Servicemen's Club at Piarco that someone bet her that she couldn’t play something in the boogie-woogie style that was popular back home in the United States. She went away and wrote ‘Piarco Boogie’, which was later renamed ‘Five Finger Boogie’.
In 1945, Atwell left for England where she would broadcast for the BBC. Whilst in London, she gained a place at the Royal Academy of Music where she completed her musical studies, becoming the first female pianist to be awarded the academy's highest grading for musicianship. She then went on to top the bill at the London Palladium, after which she said: "I started in a garret to get onto concert stages."
By 1952, her popularity had spread internationally and her hands were insured with Lloyd's of London for £40,000 - with the policy stipulating that she was never to wash dishes. Atwell signed a record contract with Decca, as her sales soon rising to 30,000 discs a week. She was by far the biggest-selling pianist of her time, with her 1954 hit, ‘Let's Have Another Party’, being the first piano instrumental to reach number one in the UK Singles Chart.
With a growing popularity, in 1955, Atwell went to Australia, where she was greeted as an international celebrity, as her tour broke box-office records on the Tivoli circuit, bringing in receipts of £600,000. She was paid AUS$5,000 a week (the equivalent of around $50,000 today), making her the highest-paid star from a Commonwealth country to visit Australia up to that time. She would tour Australia many times after that!
Championed by popular disc jockey Jack Jackson, who introduced her to Decca Records promotions manager Hugh Mendl, 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.
