Richard Sherman, one half of the prolific, award-winning pair of brothers who helped form millions of childhoods by penning the instantly memorable songs for Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – as well as the most-played tune on Earth, It’s a Small World (After All) – has died.
Their Broadway musicals included 1974’s Over Here! and stagings of Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in the mid-2000s.
The two brothers credited their father, composer Al Sherman, with challenging them to write songs and for their love of wordsmithing.
“Something good happens when we sit down together and work,” Richard Sherman told The Associated Press in a 2005 joint interview.