Songfacts®:

• Winifred Atwell was a pioneering Trinidadian-born pianist who achieved remarkable success in Britain and Australia in the 1950s and 1960s.
  
  Atwell began playing the piano at age 4 and planned a career in classical music. After serious study in New York and London, he pivoted toward a joyous fusion of ragtime and boogie-woogie that would become her trademark. Her big break came at a charity concert in London in 1948, when her lively playing caught the attention of Decca Records. A recording contract followed.
  
  In 1952, she recorded a jaunty little number called "Black and White Rag" as a B-side to another tune, "Cross Hands Boogie." Atwell admitted she treated the piece as something of a lark, telling NME, "I had only recorded the side as a laugh."
  
  But fate, as it often does, had other plans. The track caught the ear of popular disc jockey Jack Jackson, who enthusiastically championed it. The honky-tonk jauntiness of Atwell's performance sparked a craze, selling over a million copies and becoming her signature tune.
• "Black and White Rag," originally composed in 1908 by ragtime composer George Botsford, had already lived several lives. It was first recorded by the American Symphony Orchestra for an Edison cylinder and later revitalized in 1941 by pianist Wally Rose. But it was Atwell's version that endured.
• The recording almost didn't happen - or at least not in the form we know. Atwell initially played the piece on a grand piano, but something about it felt off. Enter her husband, who bought a battered old honky-tonk piano from a junk shop in Battersea for the princely sum of 50 shillings. With its slightly out-of-tune charm, this scruffy instrument gave "Black and White Rag" the warmth and character it needed, cementing its place in music history.
• "Black and White Rag" found a second life in 1969 as the theme music for the BBC's snooker program Pot Black. For the next 15 years, its jaunty, cheerful notes provided the perfect backdrop as viewers settled in to watch luminaries like Ray Reardon and John Spencer engage in what might best be described as extremely measured combat over the green baize.