R.I.P. Richard M. Sherman, legendary Disney songwriter

Richard M. Sherman has died. As half, with his brother Robert, of legendary songwriting pair The Sherman Brothers, Sherman wrote some of the most iconic scores and songs to ever grace the Disney film library—and theme parks, with the pair’s “It’s A Small World (After All)” making a strong case for itself as the most formidable ear worm in all of human history. Besides working as a composer and songwriter on dozens of Disney projects—including Mary Poppins, which won the pair double Oscars, for score and song, in 1965—Sherman was also an occasional screenwriter, notably writing a pair of successful musical adaptations of the works of Mark Twain for the screen in the 1970s. Per Variety, Sherman—who continued to be credited in Disney projects as recently as last year, usually as a “musical consultant” on works referencing his iconic tunes—died in California on Saturday, due to age-related illness. He was 95.

The younger of the two brothers, Sherman was one of two sons of Al Sherman, a songwriter prominent in New York in the 1930s. The family eventually moved to Beverly Hills, where both boys caught the musical bug; after completing military service, they eventually ended up as staff writers for Disney, where “It’s A Small World,” originally written for the New York World’s Fair in 1964, became an early hit. That same year (and after writing music for Disney films like The Parent Trap and The Sword In The Stone) the brothers’ reputation and profile exploded, thanks to their work on Disney’s lavish adaptation of P.L. Travers’ Mary Poppins.

Drawing from the sounds of English music hall music, the Mary Poppins soundtrack—including Oscar winner “Chim Chim Cher-ee,” “A Spoonful Of Sugar,” and, of course, “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”—was a smash hit, ultimately selling something like 6,000,000 records during its initial run. And it’s easy, on a re-listen, to understand why: With no disrespect to Julie Andrews or Dick Van Dyke, the music is one of the key reasons that Mary Poppins still works more than half a century later, imbuing the entire film with an energy and sincerity it might otherwise lack.

In the wake of Poppins, Sherman and his brother began to branch out: 1968 saw the pair embark on their first major non-Disney project, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, even as they continued to produce music (and Oscar noms, as with Bedknobs And Broomsticks) for the House Of Mouse. The fact is, if you grew up in the ’70s or beyond, your childhood was probably impacted at some point by Sherman’s work: He wrote songs for Charlotte’s Web, Snoopy Come Home, The Jungle Book, The Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh, and more. (He even got a toehold in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, co-writing throwback tune “Make Way For Tomorrow Today,” which cropped up at multiple parts in the MCU—including helping to close out the credits of Avengers: Endgame.) Until Robert’s death in 2012, the pair worked inevitably as a team, creating one of the most stable and long-lasting sibling duos in all of film history—nearly 60 years of music that we’re reasonably certain will be stuck in your head, in one way or another, for at least the rest of the day: “Let’s Get Together,” “The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers,” “I Wan’na Be Like You,” and dozens more of unforgettable songs.