A spoonful of one of Disney’s greatest songwriters, Richard M Sherman

More people know and love the songs of the Sherman Brothers today than perhaps any other popular songwriter of our time, and Richard will be the first to disagree with you. During my recent interview, he candidly and humbly told me that songwriters like Jerome Kern, Rodgers & Hammerstein, and Cole Porter will always be king.

While those composers and other greats like the Gershwins and Irving Berlin are the masters, even in my book I have to put the music of Richard and his brother Robert B. Sherman up there with the best. And I still stand by my story that his songs are perhaps more popular than any other American songwriter.

Who doesn’t know “It’s a Small World”, which is the most translated song in the world, or one of the songs from the original “Winnie the Pooh” feature films? How about all the music from “Mary Poppins”? “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” “Spoonful of Sugar” and the Academy Award®-winning “Chim Chim Cheree” were written for the 1964 film, but remain just as popular in the current Broadway version that was nominated for seven awards. Tony®.

Richard and Robert wrote a song titled “Tall Paul” that was recorded by a former Mouseketeer from Walt Disney’s “Mickey Mouse Club” TV show, Judy Harriet, but when another Mouseketeer, Annette Funicello, sang it, it sailed to new heights. The songwriting duo ended up writing a staggering thirty-six songs that Annette recorded over the next seven years.

When Walt Disney planned to use Annette in his next film, “The Horsemasters,” he found it logical to use the talents of the Sherman brothers to write the song and that was what paved the way for the Shermans to eventually be hired as staff.

While Walt was well aware of the songwriting talents of the Sherman brothers, he must have sensed through their songs that they had a knack for storytelling. Richard told me, “Every time we wrote a song, we always had to have a reason for it, a period for it, and a style for it. We don’t just write songs, we write songs that fit the stories.” and he expressed a story point or a personality quirk or a wish or something to do with the character, and (Walt Disney) knew that was the way we approached every song we wrote.”

After asking them to write music for some of his movies, including “Parent Trap,” he handed them a book and wanted to know what they thought about it. That book was “Mary Poppins.”

While any fan of the Sherman brothers knows that they wrote all of the music and lyrics for the original “Mary Poppins” movie, even some of their biggest fans may not know how involved they were with the film’s story.

The original “Mary Poppins” stories were just stories where she flew with the east wind and went out with the west wind and had wonderful adventures with the children.

It was the Sherman brothers who came up with the idea of ​​picking the turn of the century for the film’s time period, incorporating five or six chapters into a continuous story instead of just small segments, and having the need for Mary Poppins. to come and fix the Banks family’s problems through his magical ways.

After a story meeting with Walt about “Mary Poppins”, he told the brothers to “think about the story” and invited them to become staff writers. Once on staff, the Sherman brothers continued to write wildly popular songs, but also served as Walt’s problem solvers.

Two examples of this were for Walt’s park, Disneyland. For his “Enchanted Tiki Room” show, Walt showed the brothers his “jungle room” with singing birds and flowers and singing tikis. It was impressive, but there seemed to be no reason for all the racket. For that, Walt sought help. The Sherman brothers’ solution was in their song, explaining to the audience that they’re putting on a show, it’s a great performance… and so everything that happened made sense. It was all for a “show”.

The original concept of the “It’s a Small World” attraction was for all the little dolls to sing the national anthems of their different countries of origin. It sounded great on paper, but when it came to fruition, it was an audio mess where you couldn’t make out any hymns and everything got mixed up. Walt approached the Shermans to come up with a song to fix the problem, and thus the song “It’s a Small World” was born, sung in many languages ​​and styles.

Richard and Robert continued working for Walt Disney and composing music for the company after Walt’s death in 1966, as well as working on non-Disney projects. For example, they wrote the scores for the songs “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” and the original animated version of “Charlotte’s Web,” as well as the scripts and scores for “Tom Sawyer” and “The Slipper and the Rose.”

Richard recently revised the lyrics and wrote the music for “Neverland,” a new song for the “Peter Pan” DVD. (The original sixty-seven-year-old handwriting was discovered in a box of discarded sketches for an early version of the classic story. The author remains unknown.) Although he still collaborates on music, Richard also writes music on his own. He wrote the music for a new song on the Peter Pan DVD that was released last February. He has a wonderful stage presence and continues to charm audiences with his live performances and DVD appearances.

After 43 years since both “Mary Poppins” and “It’s a Small World” debuted, Richard M. Sherman is still going strong with no sign of stopping, much to the delight of fans.