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Shirley Bassey ft Geoff Love & His Orchestra - Climb Ev'ry Mountain (United Artists Records 1962)

2,586 views · Published 24 February 2015 · 3:14 · Indexed 5 October 2026

Channel: RoundMidnightTV · 2015 · Music

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"Climb Ev'ry Mountain" is a show tune from the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music. Here it is sung at the close of the first act by the Mother Abbess. It is themed as an inspirational piece, to encourage people to take every step towards attaining their dreams.

This song shares inspirational overtones with the song "You'll Never Walk Alone" from Carousel. They are both sung by the female mentor characters in the shows, and are used to give strength to the protagonists in the story, and both are given powerful reprises at the end of their respective shows. However, as Oscar Hammerstein II was writing the lyrics, it developed its own inspirational overtones along the lines of an earlier Hammerstein song, "There's a Hill Beyond a Hill". He felt that the metaphors of climbing mountains and fording streams better fitted Maria's quest for her spiritual compass. However, the muse behind the song was Sister Gregory, the head of Drama at Rosary College in Illinois. The letters that she sent to Hammerstein and to Mary Martin, the first Maria von Trapp on Broadway, described the parallels between a nun's choice for a religious life and the choices that humans must make to find their purpose and direction in life. When she read the manuscript of the lyrics, she confessed that it "drove [her] to the Chapel" because the lyrics conveyed a "yearning that … ordinary souls feel but cannot communicate."

Although this song has parallels with "You'll Never Walk Alone," the song shares musical similarities with the song "Something Wonderful" from The King and I. Both songs are played at a similar broad tempo, and both songs have accompaniments punctuated by heavy chords in the orchestral score.

The song has often been sung by operatically trained voices in professional stage productions. In the original Broadway production it was sung by Patricia Neway, in the original London production it was sung by Constance Shacklock, and in the original Australian production it was sung by Rosina Raisbeck.

Dame Shirley Veronica Bassey, DBE (born 8 January 1937) is a Welsh singer with a career spanning more than 60 years. Originally finding fame in the mid-1950s, Bassey has been called "one of the most popular female vocalists in Britain during the last half of the 20th century."  In the US, in particular, she is best known for recording the theme songs to the James Bond films Goldfinger (1964), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), and Moonraker (1979).

Climb every mountain,
Search high and low
Follow every byway
Every path you know

Climb every mountain
Ford every stream
Follow every rainbow
'Til you find your dream

A dream that will lead
all the love you can give
Every day of your life
For as long as you live

Climb every mountain
Ford every stream
Follow every rainbow
'Til you find your dream

A dream that will lead
All the love you can give
Every day of your life
For as long as you live

Climb every mountain
Ford every stream
Follow every rainbow
'Til you find your dream

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