Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Vinyl)

“And so the needle drops on a most brilliant chapter of the Sherman Brothers’ shared songwriting careers.  This record positively brims to the top with creativity and originality from “Hushabye Mountain” to “The Roses of Success” to “P.O.S.H.” to “Toot Sweets”.  How Fantasmagorical that this wizard of a musical can now be heard by a new generation, just as the geniuses who created it first intended.”

Robert J. Sherman
Trustee of the Robert B. Sherman Family Estate & Archives
January 24th 2017

"The style in which I composed the background music for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang may be of interest to my fellow composers and orchestrators.  Despite the comedic aspects of the picture, I decided to use Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method a la Alban Berg as the source of my musical ideas. Combining twelve-tone music with the great songs of the Sherman Brothers may seem far-fetched, but the way I did it is not easily identifiable, even to sophisticated and educated ears. In a comic scene my twelve-tone score became very climactic. When I felt I had interfered with the dialogue I softened the music. One day I was very surprised when Cubby Broccoli (Producer) exclaimed rather loudly, "No! No! Keep the music loud!"

Irwin Kostal
From the unpublished autobiography of Irwin Kostal
Used with kind permission by the Kostal Family