Winifred Atwell
Winifred Atwell (born February 27, 1914 in Tunapuna , † February 28, 1983 in Sydney ) was a pianist from Trinidad . She was the first dark-skinned musician and the first instrumentalist to have a number one hit in the UK (with the medley Let's Have Another Party , 1954).
Live and act
Atwell moved to America in the early 1940s to study piano with Alexander Borowski . She continued her studies as a concert pianist at the Royal Academy of Music in London from 1946. She also played piano in clubs. She got a recording deal with Decca in the early 1950s, and she had a slew of instrumental hits in the UK charts with ragtime and boogie-woogie pieces, starting with Britannia Rag and Coronation Rag . George Botsford's Black and White Rag became her signature tune. Her version of Poor People of Paris even reached number 1 in 1956 . She also recorded medleys such as Let's Have a Party , combining the pieces If You Knew Susie , The More We Are Together , Knees Up Mother Brown , Daisy Bell , Boomps a Daisy and She Was One of the Early Birds . Her virtuoso piano playing could also be heard on Radio Luxemburg in the 1950s and influenced musicians like Keith Emerson . She toured several times in Australia, where she lived from the 1970s.
Discography
Albums
- 1956: Double Seven
- Chartbusters
Singles
| year | Title album |
Top ranking, total weeks, awardChartsChart placements (Year, title, album , rankings, weeks, awards, notes) |
Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|
 UK
|
|||
| 1952 | Britannia Rag |
UK5 (6 weeks) UK |
|
| 1953 | Coronation Rag |
UK5 (6 weeks) UK |
|
| Flirtation Waltz |
UK10 (3 weeks) UK |
||
| Let's have a party |
UK2 (15 weeks) UK |
||
| 1954 | Rachmaninoff's 18th Variation on a Theme By Paganini |
UK9 (9 weeks) UK |
|
| Let's have another party |
UK1 (8 weeks) UK |
||
| 1955 | Let's have a ding dong |
UK3 (10 weeks) UK |
|
| 1956 | The Poor People of Paris |
UK1 (16 weeks) UK |
|
| Port-Au-Prince |
UK18 (6 weeks) UK |
||
| Left bank |
UK14 (7 weeks) UK |
||
| Make It A Party |
UK7 (12 weeks) UK |
||
| 1957 | Let's rock 'n' roll |
UK24 (4 weeks) UK |
|
| Let's have a ball |
UK4 (6 weeks) UK |
||
| 1959 | The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll |
UK24 (2 weeks) UK |
|
| Piano party |
UK10 (7 weeks) UK |
More singles
- 1957: Moonlight Gambler
- 1958: Dawning
- 1966: Mexico City
Web links
- Winifred Atwell (English)
- Winifred Atwell at Allmusic (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Jo Rice, The Guinness Book of 500 Number One Hits Enfield, Middlesex: Guinness Superlatives Ltd. 1982, p. 17
- ↑ The best No 1 records: Winifred Atwell - Let's Have Another Party , Michael Hann, The Guardian, May 31, 2012
- ↑ Chart sources: UK
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Atwell, Winifred |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Trinidadian pianist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 27, 1914 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Tunapuna |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 28, 1983 |
| Place of death | Sydney |