Ivory and steel

AT THE HEIGHT of her popularity, Winifred Atwell’s hands were insured at Lloyds for £40,000 – a huge sum for the 1950s. A stipulation of the policy: the pianist was never to wash dishes. That alone tells us about the extraordinary career of this Tunapuna-born daughter of the soil who made a name for herself in Britain and Australia before her death from a heart attack in 1983. She was commemorated on September 23 with the renaming of the auditorium at Queen’s Hall in her honour, a fitting addition to her 1969 national award.

We hope the renaming of the storied performance space in St Ann’s goes some way towards preserving Ms Atwell’s memory and underlining the many achievements of the people of this country, including those whose feats are neglected today.

Ms Atwell was the first person of African descent to top the British pop charts, the first piano instrumentalist to do so and, as of 2023, the only female instrumentalist to achieve that feat.

Yet, if her parents had their way none of this might have happened. Her mother was a nurse and her father was a pharmacist who was adamant that his daughter, who was something of a child prodigy on piano, follow in his footsteps. She duly complied and trained as a pharmacist. She would later joke that should her piano career falter she could always open a pharmacy. She never had to.

After her arrival in Britain in 1946 following a six-month stint in the US, three factors played a role in her meteoric success. The first was her talent as an accomplished pianist. But the second was her versatility.

She initially wished to be a concert pianist but quickly pivoted to boogie-woogie and ragtime to earn a living. Even at the height of her popularity, her fingers twinkled between modes.

Her recording of the 18th variation from Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini reached number nine in the UK pop charts – something unimaginable today. Her album, Ivory and Steel, was a synthesis of piano and steelpan. A concert of the same name was staged at Queen’s Hall in 1969, influencing scores of people.

Yet it was Ms Atwell’s immediately recognisable Trinidadian charisma and showmanship when she played – smiling broadly and eyeing the audience with suaveness – that is the third ingredient that made her what she was. Elton John was inspired by this fire. It was why, even when the rise of rock and roll brought the curtain down on her career, she remained popular in Australia, the country she eventually adopted as her own.

“Atwell has been and remains a neglected figure in media and popular music (let alone jazz) history,” noted academic George McKay in a book published in 2014. A decade later, though, she finally has her auditorium.