Sixty-six years ago today a Black woman was top of the Christmas pops in the UK.
Winifred Atwell’s Let’s Have Another Party went to No 1 on 3 December 1954 and stayed there for five weeks.
She was the first Black person to have a No 1 in the UK singles chart and remains the only female instrumentalist to have done so. She sold more than 20m records in a series of ragtime and boogie piano hits.
One of the early TV stars I can remember my dad loving her music. During the difficult bits she would turn to the camera and smile as if to say “see, it’s easy really”. Real party music for a time when the war was still recent history. Glad to see her memory honoured.