Along with his brother Robert, Richard M Sherman formed half of an Academy Award-winning songwriting team. Over the course of a 65-year career, the New York-born musician Richard garnered nine Oscar nominations (winning two for his work on
Mary Poppins), won three Grammy awards, and had 24 gold and platinum albums. The son of a songwriter, Sherman followed his father and his older brother into music — the two boys began working together after being challenged to do so by their father. Their first hit came in 1951 when Gene Autry recorded
Gold Can Buy You Anything But Love but their big breakthrough came in 1958 when Mouseketeer Annette Funicello recorded their song
Tall Paul and took it into the top 10. Walt Disney then hired the Sherman brothers as staff songwriters for his film studio, and they wrote more than 200 songs for some 27 films and 24 television productions. In 1964 they wrote what has become the Disneyland signature tune
It’s A Small World After All, and followed up with tunes such as
Chim Chim Cher-ee,
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and
A Spoonful of Sugar for
Mary Poppins. In the early 1970s the brothers left Disney Studios and contributed to dozens of movies. In 2005 the brothers were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and three years later each were awarded the National Medal of the Arts. Robert died in 2012: Richard Sherman died on May 25, aged 95. — Agencies
