The Disney Song Encyclopedia - fieldi

xvi A BRIEF HISTORY OF DISNEY MUSIC
of his artistic vision with Mary Poppins (1964), a mixture of live action and
animation that is the studio at its finest. The production values, special effects,
and casting are near perfection, and the score by Richard and Robert
Sherman is quite possibly the most evocative, colorful and at times haunting
one to be written for a Disney film. A highlight, “Chim Chim Cher-ee,” won
an Academy Award for Best Song, but it was the wistful “Feed the Birds”
that would be Walt Disney’s favorite song to come from any of his films. The
Jungle Book (1967) was the last animated film directly supervised by Disney,
and the music has a succinctly new flavor for a Disney film. The score has
a jazz and blues sound, quite unlike any of the previous scores written for
animated features. The song “The Bare Necessities” was nominated for an
Oscar. Disney never got to hear or see the final product before he passed
away in 1966, but his vision for both art and music would live long beyond
his lifetime.
After Disney’s death, the studio seemed to lose heart for a while. The
movie products turned out during the time from 1967 to the mid-1970s
range from uninspired to mildly entertaining, frequently missing Walt
Disney’s magical touch. It is not until the studio regrouped in the late 1980s
that the magic seemed to return through the music of the composing team
of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman. The Little Mermaid (1989) was so
well received that Disney Studios emerged once again as the top producer
of family entertainment and, for our purposes, songs. Two songs from The
Little Mermaid were nominated for Oscars, with “Under the Sea” bringing
home the prize. Menken and Ashman’s next endeavor, Beauty and the
Beast (1991), produced three Oscar-nominated songs with the title tune
fetching the statue. Beauty and the Beast also holds the distinction of being
the only animated film to be nominated for Best Picture. Sadly, Howard
Ashman passed away from AIDS while working on his next animated feature,
Aladdin (1992), but his efforts at the Disney studio opened the door
for many musicals to come. The Lion King (1994), Pocahontas (1995), The
Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), and Tarzan (1999) proved that the Disney
movie musical was alive and well.
During the 1990s, Disney branched into two new areas of entertainment:
the Broadway musical and direct-to-home-video markets. As its maiden
voyage, Disney Theatrical Productions produced a stage adaptation of its
hit animated film Beauty and the Beast in 1994. Composer Alan Menken
returned to the project and teamed with lyricist Tim Rice to create several
new songs to flesh out the existing score from the original feature. Although
it was not critically well received, the piece was an audience favorite and ran
for thirteen years, paving the way for other Disney musicals on Broadway,