Winifred Atwell

Winifred Atwell rose to prominence among the leading figures on the newly launched British pop charts of the 1950s, where her upright piano delivered a distinctive boogie-woogie take on ragtime. Born February 27, 1914, in Tunapuna, Trinidad, she grew up as the daughter of a pharmacy owner who had schooled her in chemistry with the expectation that she would eventually run the family business. Instead, she devoted herself to entertaining U.S. servicemen at the local air base or at the Piarco club. Having studied piano from childhood, she already possessed the skill to satisfy the stationed troops, and after being urged to perform in the current boogie-woogie manner she returned to the club with a new piece originally called “Piarco Boogie” and later retitled “Five Finger Boogie.”

In the early 1940s she relocated to the United States to work with pianist Alexander Borovsky, then continued to London and enrolled at the Royal Academy of Music, becoming the first woman to receive its highest musicianship distinction. While completing her studies she supported herself by playing ragtime in London clubs; entrepreneur Bernard Delfont noticed her at the Casino Theatre and secured her a Decca Records contract. In 1946 she met comedian Lew Levisohn, who soon became her husband and proposed a novel stage routine: she would begin with a classical selection on a concert grand before switching to ragtime on a battered upright they acquired from a junk shop for £2.50. That instrument became known as her “other piano,” traveled with her worldwide—including to the Sydney Opera House—and was kept slightly detuned to produce a subtle off-key timbre that helped define her sound. Her bright smile and engaging warmth offered welcome relief to British audiences still living under postwar rationing.

One of her early-1950s successes was George Botsford’s 1920s composition “Black and White Rag,” which enjoyed extensive radio exposure and later served as the theme for the BBC snooker series Pot Black. When the official British singles chart debuted in November 1952, Atwell became one of the first Black artists to reach the Top Ten and the first instrumentalist to appear there, courtesy of “Britannia Rag.” Further hits followed through the decade, among them “Coronation Rag” in summer 1953 marking Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation and, at Christmas, the first of her music-hall medleys issued as “Let’s Have a Party,” which incorporated “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.” Consistent with the pattern she established, each single paired an up-tempo rag on side one with a gentler medley on the B-side.

Returning to her classical background, she charted in 1954 with Rachmaninov’s 18th Variation on a Theme by Paganini and scored her first number-one hit at Christmas with the follow-up medley “Let’s Have Another Party.” Mid-decade brought peak British popularity: she performed at the Royal Variety Show and gave a private recital for the Queen, who requested an encore of “Roll Out the Barrel.” A planned 1956 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in the United States never materialized after racist objections prevented a Black woman from being featured. Australia proved far more welcoming; her 1956 visit there generated comparable enthusiasm. Back in Britain that same year she secured her second number-one single with a version of the French song “Poor People of Paris.”

Thereafter her chart dominance faded amid the arrival of rock & roll and the emergence of young British pianist Russ Conway, whose honky-tonk and ragtime recordings mirrored her own approach. She continued to place seasonal medleys such as “Let’s Have a Ding Dong,” “Make It a Party,” and “Piano Party” near the upper reaches of the chart. Still immensely popular in Australia, she publicly condemned the treatment of the Aborigines and eventually settled in Sydney with her husband. After Lew Levisohn’s death in 1977 she weighed a return to Trinidad yet remained in Australia. In the early 1980s a fire destroyed her Narrabeen home, and she suffered a heart attack soon afterward. She died on February 28, 1983.