Atwell was natural around Trinidad and Tobago. Her personal owned the pharmacy, & she trained as a pill roller, though she experienced played the piano since a immature age, & achieved considerable popularity locally.

She moved to London in 1946, where she experienced gained a place at the Royal Academy of Music. To trend lines her studies, she played rags at London clubs & theatres.

She signed the record locate Decca in 1951, and went in to record her right-known "hits", like ''Let's Have a Ding-Dong, Unfortunate Population of Paris (which reached first in the stock and index charts), Britannia Rag & Black & White Rag''. This endure piece became illustrious once again in a Seventies when the signature of the Pot Black snooker programme on BBC television.

Atwell likewise performed many concerts, including Royal Variety Performances and television appearances. The average concert would run by owning classical music played in the grand piano, followed by popular music in the honkie tonk piano, which she fondly known as 'the more piano'. It got been bought for £2 10s. at the Battersea junk shop in the late 1940s.

Her popularity began to wane at a prevent of the decade, & tries to combine further contemporary music, like Rock 'north' Roll hits, sustaining her have whitey tonk style were abortive. She migrated sustaining her married man & manager Lew Levisohn to Australia inside the late 1960s, where she continued to play until her retirement in 1978. She died around 1983.