"a piano inspiration to both Sir Elton John, myself, and many others"
"Winifred Atwell is very important in British cultural and musical life. She is one of the first women, and certainly one of the first women of Afro Caribbean heritage to become a mainstream figure in 1950s British entertainment."
"Her entrepreneurial spirit helped her break racial and musical barriers in mid-century Britain."
Winifred Atwell was born in Trinidad in 1914 and moved to London in the 1940s. She became the first black artist to have a UK number-one single and remains the only female instrumentalist to secure a top-selling UK single. A blue plaque was unveiled at her former Mayfair home, 18 Bourdon Street, where she kept a Steinway concert grand and a deliberately out-of-tune upright piano that became her signature sound. Between 1952 and 1960 she spent 117 weeks in the UK charts, appeared on over 100 BBC radio programmes, and fronted shows on ITV and BBC television. While living in London she used her chemist training to open a Brixton hair salon catering for black hair care. The plaque recognition highlights her cultural, musical, and entrepreneurial contributions and her role in opening doors for black artists.
Read at www.bbc.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]