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Let's Go Fly a Kite

Song by the Sherman Brothers

Field	Value
name	Let's Go Fly a Kite
artist	David Tomlinson and Dick van Dyke
album	Mary Poppins (Original Soundtrack)
released
label	Walt Disney
writer	Richard M. Sherman
Robert B. Sherman

Robert B. Sherman "Let's Go Fly a Kite" is a song from Walt Disney's 1964 film Mary Poppins, composed by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman. This song is performed at the end of the film when George Banks (played by David Tomlinson), realizes that his family is much more important than his job. He mends his son's kite and takes his family on a kite-flying outing. The song is sung by Tomlinson, Dick Van Dyke and eventually the entire chorus.

In keeping with Mr. Banks's change in character, this song was pre-recorded, and thus sung normally, by Tomlinson, rather than in his previous talk-singing in the Rex Harrison style, seen earlier in "The Life I Lead". This musical number also appears in the Sing Along Songs series of Disney videos.

Development

Although the notion of Mary Poppins gliding down a kite is mentioned incidentally in one of the P.L. Travers books, the metaphor of the mended kite (being a symbol of the mended Banks family) is taken from the 1961 Sherman Brothers screenplay treatment. The song was inspired by the Sherman Brothers' father, Al Sherman, who besides being a well-known songwriter in his day was also an amateur kite maker who made kites for neighbourhood children as a weekend hobby.

The song was originally written in 4/4 or common time, but Walt Disney felt it was too much like the ending of a Broadway show and wanted a song that was more "breezy", like a waltz, so it was recrafted into a 3/4 waltz-like arrangement. The song is in B-flat major.

The song appears in the 2004 stage musical version as well, but closer to the middle of the show and not at the show's end. In this version, the scene recreates what happens at the beginning of the second book when Mary Poppins came back on the string of Michael's kite.

Cover versions

On 6 April 2015 a version by Burl Ives featured on BBC's The One Show.

Literary sources

Sherman, Robert B. Walt's Time: from before to beyond. Santa Clarita: Camphor Tree Publishers, 1998.

References

(2009). "The Disney Song Encyclopedia". Scarecrow Press.
(21 May 2007). "Let's Go Fly a Kite".

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

1964-songs david-tomlinson-songs dick-van-dyke-songs songs-from-mary-poppins songs-written-by-the-sherman-brothers works-about-kite-flying

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