Richard M. Sherman is half of the famous Sherman Brothers songwriting team. Responsible for the scores of “Mary Poppins” and “Jungle Book” He has two Academy Awards, A Grammy, A star on the walk of fame, 23 gold and platinum albums, and is in the Songwriters Hall of Fame. I got a chance to speak to Mr. Sherman about his current projects and some of his much beloved past ones. His current project is up for a Grammy Nomination, Tiny Oaks. A Collection of Family Music that teaches as well as entertains. I also got to find out the origins to the word Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

After a distinguished career of making Children's Music for other people what made you want to have your own brand with Tiny Oaks?

I like to call it Family Music because there is a kid in every sophisticated adult that is dying to have a good time. That was Walt Disney's magic, He appealed to that in everybody. There are double meanings to practically every one of our songs. “Spoon Full of Sugar” has nothing it has to do with spoons or sugar, it's about having a happy attitude. The two layers that we write into our songs are very important to us. For Tiny Oaks I made songs that are both educational and entertaining. It's a great opportunity and challenge to write things on those two levels. Singing about the town bells and learning sounds to help define notes and sounds, it's the first lesson for them in music. Each of the songs teach in a fun way. It's a wonderful project that I am honored to be apart of.

What makes Tiny Oaks unique from the other Family Album's going for nominations as well?

This has several things going for it. An exceptional beautiful recording, a really highly polished peice of work. The talent in it is so outstanding. Andy Belling did a terrific job as music director. It's such a permanent thing. I think this CD will be around for another 30 years. Walt Disney taught us to do things that have legs, that will be permanent. Aim for the stars at all times. Don't just write for the season. We never wrote just for kids it was always for people, young and old alike. When you buy the album both kids and parents can enjoy it. You lean how to dress, count, and how to sound out words with many syllables. It's a wonderful thing.

This project has been done without major backing. Why did you go the independent route?

Because I had faith in the people involved. They have great big plans for it, and as we all know from tiny acorns giant oaks grow.

The Tiny Oaks songs have almost a lullaby quality to it, what was the idea behind that?

Some of them do, yes. We wanted something that kids could sing and hum along to and remember the songs. We do have a lot of up tempo songs in the album as well. It's a nice balance. It's all meant to be kid friendly, entertaining and educational at the same time. We wanted it to have a lot of value for parents.

What was your greatest achievement?

I think perhaps the single effort my brother Robert and I did was the Mary Poppins Score. It established us as a writing force. Prior to that we where popular but it was the major step forward for our career

What do you think about the current popularity of showing films like "Mary Poppins" in the sing-along format. You where apart of the one here in Los Angeles, what was it like?

It's a lot of fun and quite a compliment to see everyone singing along with it. To see middle aged men, old lady's and little kids all singing away during "Spoon full of Sugar" makes me very proud of it. It's one of the very nice things that has happened to us.

What do you think of the trend of musical films going to stage?

I love it. Mary Poppins On Broadway has standing room only to see the shows. In London it's still playing 3 1/2 years later. It's a great thing, but you have to conform to the medium. You can't do cinematic tricks on stage. We consulted on the project. George Stiles and Anthony Drewe have done an great job with the added music.

How did you make up the word Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious ?

That's a word we sort of concocted from our childhood when we used to make up double talk words. In the screenplay version of Mary Poppins we wanted Her to give the children a gift they could bring back with them from inside the chalk drawing when they came out into the real world. If it was a tangible thing like a seashell or pine cone it would disappear. So we said, Remember when we used to make up the big double talk words, we could make a big obnoxious word up for the kids and thats wear it started. Obnoxious is an ugly word so we said atrocious word, thats very British. We started with atrocious and then you can sound smart and be precocious, we had precocious and atrocious and we wanted something super colossal and thats corny, so we took super and did double talk to get califragilistic which means nothing, it just came out that way. That's in a nut shell what we did over two weeks. All together you get Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Was "Step in time" a real game, like follow the leader?

We came up with it, the choreographers said lets have different things shouting out like "over the roof tops" and "make your elbows". We put those in so the choreographers would have something to work with. Mark Breaux and Dee Dee Wood where the choreographers and they where geniuses at it.

I wanted to know if the casting of the singer had any influence on the song...for example, Jungle Book's "I Wanna be like You" is so Louis Prima. Do they cast the singer first for "character" parts, and write towards their style?

When you work on an animated film like “Jungle Book” and you are working with the master story teller who says have fun with this rather dark Kipling story you get ideas. The apes in the story are scary and spooky for kids so in order to have fun with it we had change it up. What does the king of the Apes do, he swings from trees, We made him the king of the swingers, a jazz man. The marauding monkeys became the band. A fun idea around something scary. We wrote this jazz piece and started to look for the perfect casting. At the same time Louis Prima released a cover of Mary Poppins in his Jazz and Scat style. We felt he was born to play the part. My brother and I played the song for him in Vegas, and he responded "You tryin' to make a monkey outa me?" "Yes, exactly we are." "Well ya got me, I love it." It became a signature piece for him, with his band they played it all the time.

Did they use an effect on the mermaid's voices in Small World, or make the singers sing like that?

It's from a new version of the song. In the version we did it was all pretty national country styles in there own languages. The effect is done digitally and I like it.

What is the best way to get the song "It's a small world out of your head?"

I have been praised and dammed for that. The best way is to play any other beautiful song, the Beatles works best. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds will get it out of your head.

Tiny Oaks is a CD, Animated DVD, and Book learning series for children.