Disney Behind The Music
For those who also wondered where Disney got most of the catchy tunes in there feature films from
A Spoonful of Sherman — Richard Sherman Chats About His Remarkable Career
“Chim Chim Cher-ee.” “I Wanna Be Like You.” “It’s a Small World.” They’re the songs that we all grew up with, the classics — and they were all written by Richard and Robert Sherman. The Sherman Brothers were truly a legendary Disney creative force, writing songs for TV, Theme Park attractions, and films — whatever Walt Disney required. And in 1990, they were formally inducted as Disney Legends, acknowledging their many accomplishments.
Now “the boys,” as they were known to their colleagues, are the subjects of a new documentary film by the same name. “The Boys” was a labor of love for filmmakers Jeff and Greg Sherman — cousins, and the sons of Robert and Richard respectively. In it, the cousins remember their fathers’ careers, and the distance between them in later years. It’s a wonderful and touching movie that has taken years to make the journey to the big screen at last.
In honor of “The Boys” — and “the boys” … — we sat down with Richard Sherman to discuss his amazing Disney career. Appropriately enough, we met in the very soundstage on the Walt Disney Studio Lot where some of the songs for “Mary Poppins” had been recorded, as Richard recalled.
He remembers Walt Disney well, as a remarkable boss to work for. “You had to be good — you couldn’t just be ordinary, you had to be incredible!” Richard laughs. “And everybody knew that, and everybody broke their butts to get stuff as good as they possibly could. And he’d look at it, and he’d say ‘Okay, that’ll work.’ “It was the highest form of praise any Disney employee could hope for — then later they might hear from a colleague that Walt absolutely loved what they did.
It was a demanding environment that pushed everyone to perform at the very highest level, but it was also a highly rewarding one. Richard recalls, “It was a great big brotherhood. Everybody cared about everybody, and we all wanted the projects to succeed. We all loved and respected Walt. We’d have our disagreements, but basically it was a very warm environment.”As with every detail of his Studio’s creations, Walt was very hands-on with the songs created by the Sherman brothers — and knew what he wanted to hear. “Walt was very appreciative of music,” Richard says. “He could hear a finished product from what I played for him — that’s an amazing talent! If it was a song that a young woman would be singing to a little boy, and I sang it with my husky baritone, he’d hear the woman singing to the little boy.” Often on Friday afternoons, he would ask the brothers to come to his office and Richard would perform “Feed the Birds,” Walt’s favorite song.
The creative partnership between the Sherman brothers and the Studio began in the late ’50s, as Richard recalls. “We began at Disney because of Annette Funicello. She was the star of the Mouseketeers and she had some big hits with some of our songs, like ‘Pineapple Princess” and “Tall Paul.” We were asked by the Studio to come up with a song that she could sing in a film — we didn’t know that Walt Disney himself had asked for this!
“We wrote a little tune called ‘Strummin’ Song.’ We brought it up to the Studio and played it for Jimmy Johnson, head of music publishing at the time, and he said, ‘That sounds great — we’ve got to play it for Walt.’ And we said, ‘Walt who? You’re kidding me!’ But he said, ‘Walt OK’s everything.’
“Then when we met Walt, he started describing the wrong picture to us. He said, ‘This picture is about two girls who meet in summer camp,’ [Walt must have been working on 'The Parent Trap' at the time, and gotten his films mixed up] and we were dying because we had written the song for Annette’s picture, ‘The Horsemasters’! But we played it for him and he said, ‘Yeah, that’ll work.’ Then he gave us the script for ‘The Parent Trap,’ and we wrote songs for that film as well. Eventually, we wound up writing songs for six different films. And that’s when he got the confidence to let us come up with some ideas for this book called ‘Mary Poppins’ — and that’s how it began.”
The brothers realized that “Mary Poppins” was truly going to be a unique musical opportunity. “We did songs for about 12 Disney films and TV projects before ‘Poppins.’ We did songs for the television shows, for the Parks, everything. But all the while we were working on ‘Poppins’ ideas and ‘Poppins’ songs.” In fact, in addition to writing the unforgettable songs for “Mary Poppins,” the brothers were instrumental in helping to adapt the disconnected stories in the “Mary Poppins” books into a movie with a strong storyline, along with screenwriters Bill Walsh and Don DeGradi.
But another film — Walt’s last as a hands-on creative force — just might be Richard’s favorite to recall. As he says, “‘The Jungle Book’ was the most fun we ever had working on a movie. We had Louis Prima, Phil Harris, and Sterling Holloway — all these wonderful talents!”
And yet it was a movie that almost wasn’t a Sherman brothers project at all: “We came in late to ‘The Jungle Book,’ because the picture was rejected when it was done, except for one really fine song — ‘Bare Necessities.’ All of the rest — well, put it this way, Walt didn’t like it!” Richard chuckles. “And he didn’t like the storyline. So we came in because they needed a new score except for the one song. So we did it, and it was fun! Louis Prima’s rendition of ‘I Wanna Be Like You’ was definitely a high point.”
Songwriting has truly been Richard’s life — as his son Greg says, “Growing up, we had a piano in every room!” and he is still ever-willing to tickle the ivories.
“I’ve loved music ever since I was a little boy. And if you need something Japanese, I know how to write the flavor of Japanese — it won’t be Japanese, but it will feel like it. If it’s India, I can hear how it will sound,” he tells us. “That’s what I do! I can’t do much of anything else, but I can write songs.”
And from “Strummin’ Song” through “Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” “The Happiest Millionaire,” “The Tigger Movie,” and dozens more, those songs have made us all richer — and a little more tuneful.
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