Eric Boswell (songwriter)
| Eric Boswell | |
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Eric Boswell
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| Born |
Eric Simpson 18 July 1921 Sunderland, Durham, England |
| Died | 29 November 2009 (aged 88) Hexham, Northumberland, England |
| Occupation | Songwriter |
Eric Boswell (1921–2009) was an English composer of popular songs and folk music, most famous for writing the children's Christmas song Little Donkey.
Eric Boswell was born Eric Simpson in Millfield, Sunderland, son of a tailor and a seamstress. He studied piano from age seven and later organ under Clifford Hartley, organist of Bishopwearmouth Church (now Sunderland Minster). After degrees in Electrical Engineering from Sunderland Technical College and Physics from Birkbeck College, London, Boswell joined Marconi as a scientist working with radar before becoming a Physics lecturer. Meanwhile, he spent his leisure time writing serious piano music and light songs. A composition he entered the 1950 Brighton Music Festival won first prize and several of his classical works were performed at London's Wigmore Hall during the 1950s.
In 1959, while hawking his more commercial songs to London's Tin Pan Alley music publishers, Boswell encountered Gracie Fields at the music publisher Chappell who she was visiting to seek a song to revive her career. Boswell offered her Little Donkey, his telling of Mary and Josephs' journey to Bethlehem, and Fields' recording and another by The Beverley Sisters, made the song the Christmas hit of 1959, being No. 1 in the then dominant UK Sheet Music Chart from mid November until New Year. The song was a hit again at Christmas 1960 for Nina & Frederik.
By now Boswell had a publishing contract with Chappell and wrote songs for them through the 1960s including Matt Munro's I'll Know Her and Ricky Valance's Why Can't We. The latter (Valance's follow up to Tell Laura I Love Her) came third in 1961's A Song For Europe. Boswell wrote the second placed song too, Suddenly I'm in Love sung by Steve Arlen, which fell one vote short of representing the UK at 1961's Eurovision Song Contest. 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.
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