Elton John, a pianist, singer-songwriter, and five-time Grammy Award winner, selling over 300 million in record has commended Trinidad & Tobago for renaming Queen’s Hall Auditorium in honor of a Trini-born pianist whom he considers his first inspiration.
John stated in a video message that was shown during the September 23 renaming ceremony: “Winifred Atwell…gave me the momentum to become who I am. Congratulations to the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago on renaming the Queen’s Hall Auditorium to the Winifred Atwell Auditorium. Well deserved and thank you so much.”
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John revisits memories as a young child learning to play the piano. The legend recalled his family purchasing many of Atwell’s albums to aid in his practice as a young musician.
John shared, “The turning point for me with Winifred Atwell was seeing her on television. Seeing how beautiful she was, her smile, the way she played the piano.”
“She could do classical things, she could do great boogie-woogie stuff…I was entranced by her. She fascinated me and I fell in love with her. I fell in love with her kindness. She had an aura of kindness and talent and her smile – I copied that smile.”
“I idolized her. She was literally my first idol as a piano player and it’s never left me really. She’s always in my heart.”
Atwell’s influence on John and his admiration for her are well-documented; in his 2019 autobiography, Me, he referred to her as “a big, immensely jolly Trinidadian lady who performed onstage with two pianos.”
“I loved her sense of glee, the slightly camp way she would announce, ‘And now, I’m going to my other piano’; the way she would lean back and look at the audience with a huge grin on her face while she was playing, like she was having the best time in the world,” he noted.
John mentioned in his video message that once he became successful in show business, he was able to meet her at an airport.
“She came over to me and we both gave each other the biggest hug and she bought me a Koala bear which I thought was so sweet. So, I did meet my idol.”
On August 22, the government gave the name change approval. Growing up in Tunapuna, Atwell was born in 1915. In 1946, she relocated to England from New York following World War II. Over 20 million albums of her boogie-woogie and ragtime classics made her extremely successful in Britain and Australia starting in the 1950s.
She was the only female instrumentalist to achieve a number-one hit in the UK Singles Chart as of 2023 and the first Black artist to accomplish it. For her contributions to global music, she received the Hummingbird Gold Medal in 1969.
