Winifred Atwell



Winifred Atwell ( Tunapuna ( Trinidad ), 27 February1914 - Seaforth ( New South Wales , Australia ), 28 February1983 ) was a Boogie Woogie- and ragtimepianiste, who spent time inBritain , Australia and the United States was very successful. She took several plates at include Decca . ==Biography [ edit] == Atwell was born in Tunapuna in Trinidad and Tobago and studied medicine because she was going to work in the family business, later a pharmacy . At a young age she already played the piano for Americans at the air base and they wrote the song that is now called "Five Finger Boogie". In the early 1940s she moved to the United States to study music and in 1946 she moved to London to study at the music while meanwhile in clubs and theaters had to finance, culminating in her study London Palladium . She married in 1946 with Lew Levison .

When she filling in for someone at the Casino Theatre, she was immediately entrepreneur Bernard Delfont contracted, then scored several hits including the hugely successful Black and White rag . Then she came by Hugh Mendl at Decca .

Atwell played gigs usually first on one wing and then her "other piano", a threadbare worn upright piano that her husband of fifty shillings in a junk shop had bought.

In 1952 her career was at its peak, her hands were at Lloyd's of London insured for a quarter of a million dollars and sold them at Decca 30,000 plates per week, which makes them by far the most selling pianist of her time. She is the only British pianist two gold and two silver plates has to her name and she was the first black artist in Britain who sold a million records.

In 1980 she suffered a stroke, after which they are a year later in The Mike Walsh Show announced to retire. From that moment she played only as an organist at her church in Narrabeen. In 1983 she suffered a heart attack after her home in Narrabeen had caught fire, and she died. She was buried beside her husband in South Gundurimba Private Cemetery near Lismore .