Boswell offered her "Little Donkey", his telling of Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem, and Fields' recording and another by The Beverley Sisters, made the song the Christmas hit of 1959, being No.

Meanwhile, "Little Donkey" was steadily re-recorded by artists as diverse as Vera Lynn, Don Estelle, St Winifred's School Choir and, in later decades, Aled Jones, Patti Page, Camera Obscura (who performed the song as part of a John Peel Session) and Cerys Matthews.

A local radio programme and later annual Newcastle City Hall show Geordierama was musically directed by Boswell and featured his songs alongside Northumbrian folk dancers, pipers and comedians.

Hosted by local celebrities including Mike Neville, Bill Steel and Frank Wappat, the stage Geordierama was part of the annual Newcastle Festival for much of the 1970s, later moving to the New Tyne Theatre, and vinyl recordings of the shows were released.

Also in the 1980s Boswell, on piano, formed a chamber trio with Aitchison and Ging named Sounds of Tyne & Wear, which performed his songs around the region for many years, often called upon by the Lord Mayor of Newcastle to entertain visiting dignitaries to the city, which on one occasion included Prince Philip.

His existing song, "Jenny Was There", a paean to the annual funfair on Newcastle Town Moor known as 'The Hoppin's' was suitably amended to 'Katie' for the production, but the other numbers were newly written.

The heyday of the Geordie scene had passed but he continued to write invariably humorous songs: leeks, whippets and racing pigeons all featuring, as did the new Millennium Bridge and Gateshead MetroCentre.

The Tyneside a cappella choir Spectrum performed and recorded Boswell's work and County Durham opera singer Graeme Danby, principal bass of English National Opera, became an enthusiastic supporter: most of Boswell's later songs being written for Danby and his partner, mezzo-soprano Valerie Reid, to perform at their Northumberland open-air concerts, and the pair released two albums of his material.

Meanwhile, some of Boswell's 1970s ballads such as "Tyneside's Where I Come From", "Sweet Waters of Tyne" and "But It's Mine", had joined "The Blaydon Races" and "The Lambton Worm" in the canon of northern traditional songs, and are still regularly performed in the region's folk clubs.

Classical music The Enchantress Folk songs "Aye-You-Aye*, The Ballad of Geordie Washington, Bird Fly High, Blinkin' Eye Millennium Bridge, A Blushing English Rose*, But It's Mine, Cawd Feet, Come The Global Warming, The Doomsday Song, Everything Changes, Father's on the Beer Again, The First Footin' Song, The Frustrated Fishwife, The Gateshead Angel of the North, A Geordie Love Song, The Ghost of St Mary's, The Girl From Outer Space, The Girl on the Cheviot Hills, The Golden Voice of Bobby, The Good Old Bad Old Days, Got To Get Away, The Great Longbenton Leek, The Highland Chorus, I Cann't Help Havin' A Sort of Feelin', I Got A Bun in the Oven, I Waited on the North Dock, I Will Not Lose You Now*, I've Got A Daft Pigeon, I've Got A Little Whippet, I've Got To Propose*, I've Seen You Somewhere Before*, Katie's in Love*, Katie Mulholland's The Name*, Katie Was There* (originally Jenny Was There), Lookin' For A Girl, Mary Ann, Mary Lister (lyrics traditional), Maybe This Is Love, The MetroCentre, The Multiplication Song, My Girl From The North Land, My Gorgeous WWW Girl, My Own Bonny Lad, Never Like This*, North of the Tyne, Nothing's Quite The Same, Ower Young To Be Married Yet, The Parting, This Place Is on My Mind, Playing Hard To Get, The Rain Started Falling, The Saga of Hadrian's Wall, The Social Security Waltz, The Summer of Last Year, Supermarket Blues, Sweet Waters of Tyne, Take It Easy*, Take Me Up The Tyne, There'll Be No-one Else For Me, There's More To Life Than Women And Beer, They Don't Write Songs Like These, A Thousand Years From Now, Tyneside's Where I Come From, Wait For Me*, Welcome To Geordieland, We've Got Everything*, What's A Woman For*, What's Life All About?, What Became of Yesterday*, When I Was A Lad, Where Are We Going From Here?, With Me Pit Claes On, You Are For Me, You Little Waster, You'll Be Laughing, You'll Never Find A Woman Like Me" (* featured in the musical Katie Mulholland) Geordie dialect words