"River Song" is a song composed by Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman in 1973. It was sung by Charley Pride in the musical motion picture '' Tom Sawyer''. The song score received a Christopher Award and a nomination for an Academy Award. The song's placement as a "bookend" piece to the motion picture was largely due to the

Sherman Brothers The Sherman Brothers were an American songwriting duo that specialized in musical films, made up of Robert B. Sherman (December 19, 1925 – March 6, 2012) and Richard M. Sherman (born June 12, 1928). Together they received various accolades in ...

' deep involvement with the film, including screenwriters as well as

songwriters A songwriter is a musician who professionally composes musical compositions or writes lyrics for songs, or both. The writer of the music for a song can be called a composer, although this term tends to be used mainly in the classical music ...

. The song is featured on the popular music LP, ''The Brady Bunch Phonographic Album'' which features a total of three

songs including "River Song."

Inspired by Twain

The Shermans did not know how they would end their screenplay until reading Twain's own conclusion to the book. According to Robert B. Sherman, the "River Song" was inspired by the last page of

Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has p ...

's book in which Twain writes: "So endeth this chronicle. It being strictly a history of a boy, it must stop here; the story could not go much further without becoming the history of a man. When one writes a novel about grown people, he knows exactly where to stop -- that is, with a marriage; but when he writes of juveniles, he must stop where he best can." The song reflects this with the lyrics "The boy is gonna grow to a man, to a man/Only once in his life is he free/Only one golden time in his life is he free." The song is used to begin and end the movie, and is set against footage of the Mississippi River, showing Tom running toward the river, alongside it, swimming in it, etc. Thus both the song and the footage reinforce the metaphor of the boy as a force of nature (i.e., like the river), and also takes inspiration from the opening paragraphs of Twain's semi-autobiographical novel '' Life on the Mississippi''. Songs written by the Sherman Brothers 1973 singles Music based on novels Songs about the United States Songs about rivers {{1970s-single-stub