Hi,
I'm Robert Sherman's son, Jeff. I not only sat with the Sherman Brothers during some of their writing sessions, but I also collaborated with them on a series of half hour musicals we did called "The Enchanted Musical Playhouse" back in 1984-85. My uncle is the pianist of the two and loves performing in public and my father was more an introvert, a scholar and a poet/lyricist. Dick's extrovert personality and 'song-plugger' skills -- particularly in the old interviews we used in "the boys" might make it appear to you that he wrote the 'vast majority of the work." This is FAR from true, however, and even he would tell you this. The truth is, while Dick perhaps wrote most of the music and my father (Bob) wrote the lion's share of the lyrics, both men wrote both. They conceived the song concepts together, then both would contribute both words and melody. As they always put it, "I write the music and the lyrics and he writes the lyrics and the music." I hope this answers your question. jcs
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random_guy2
11 years ago
Ahh, very interesting! I really appreciate the response! If you don't mind my asking, was your father a musician himself, or did he express his musical preferences more through Dick?
Also I just want to make extra clear, I didn't mean any of this as a slight against Bob. It certainly seemed to me that the two formed a great team and would not have had nearly the success individually that they did together, and trying to assign "credit" for parts of a work is a somewhat futile exercise to begin with. I was more interested in how their dynamic worked while writing the songs, especially because they both seemed to share "music and lyrics" credits, whereas nowadays it is more common to see songwriting teams with separate "music by" and "lyrics by" credits.
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