Remembering 2024’s Music Losses: Richard M. Sherman

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While there’s no news to report from Ohio right now I’ll give you another member of the list of most significant (to me personally) music losses of 2024. You may not know this name but you darn sure know the songs if you’re of a certain age. This is a man who made us all happy as kids. Richard M. Sherman The Sherman Brothers were responsible for so many of those classic Walt Disney musical numbers throughout the years. Their influence was so great that, during the height of the Cold War, they won an award from the Soviet Union! Add to that two Oscars (for [i]Mary Poppins), a National Medal of Arts, and a Disney Legends induction, and you know that the Sherman Brothers were a vital component of movie music. The only knock I have on Richard and Robert Sherman is that they wrote “It’s a Small World,” which is a song that was playing for TWENTY MINUTES NON-STOP when we got stuck on the ride in Disney World back in the 70s. Talk about something making you hate a song?! But you can forgive him when you think about “The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers,” “I Wanna Be Like You,” “Chim-Chim-Cher-ee” (the Oscar-winning best song), “Let’s Go Fly a Kite,” and “Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang”…not to mention the POP hit “You’re Sixteen.” Robert passed away in 2012. Richard joined his brother a couple of weeks before his 96th birthday. What a great team of songwriters! Richard M. Sherman Born Richard Morton Sherman, June 12, 1928, New York, New York Died May 25, 2024, Los Angeles, California (age-related illness) (age 95) HALL OF FAME: Songwriters Here’s Dick Van Dyke and the Vantastix, doing an a cappella version of the Sherman Brothers’ “Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang”: