Songfacts®:

• Written by Leonard Bernstein (music) and Stephen Sondheim (lyrics), the idea for "Maria," which was published in 1956 and appeared on Sony's soundtrack for West Side Story in 1961, began several years earlier. Leonard Bernstein had written a musical tentatively called East Side Story in 1949. Maria was the Jewish girl who captures the heart of Tony, a Catholic boy from Greenwich Village. However, Bernstein had trouble drumming up interest in his musical and as time went by, the story of a forbidden Jewish/Catholic romance seemed stale.
  
  Stephen Sondheim was 27 years old and working on his first musical when he sat down to rework the "dummy lyrics" that Bernstein had created. By now, Maria had become the sister of the Puerto Rican gang leader, Bernardo. When Tony, a member of the white gang, the Jets, sees Maria at a high school dance, he is infatuated. Bernstein admits that his initial lyrics, which included lines such as "lips like mine, divine" were simply put, bad. Sondheim felt that since Tony had just met Maria the song should not be about her, but about how her name sounds like the most beautiful word on Earth. Instead of singing about the girl, Tony sings, "the most beautiful sound I ever heard, all the beautiful sounds of the world in a single word."
• On the surface, it seems as if "Maria" would be a very simple song to write. Stephen Sondheim's lyrics include Tony singing the name "Maria" 27 times. Lines such as "Maria, I just met a girl named Maria" sound easy, but Sondheim said they are not. His theory about writing lyrics is that he needs to "underwrite them, not overwrite them," to avoid taking away from the richness of the music. He wanted to keep this song simple to be sure not to create a song that sounds like what he calls "an overly rich fruitcake." Because of that, Bernstein said, no other song in the score took as long to write as "Maria."
• For a song that is iconic as "Maria," it is somewhat surprising that it was never a chart hit. Still, it has been covered numerous times by a range of artists that includes Johnny Mathis, Marvin Gaye, and Josh Groban. The version recorded by the Dave Brubeck Quartet in 1960 also makes an appearance in the 2012 film Silver Linings Playbook. The Brubeck cover was done with the New York Philharmonic in 1959. The jazz version of "Maria" is certainly a showpiece for Brubeck, but it also allows Bernstein's music to shine, which is not bad for a guy who was accused of writing music that was, as film critic Bob Mondello says, "unhummable." And for good measure, the conductor for that New York Philharmonic series? It was none other than Leonard Bernstein.
• Rita Moreno, who was born in Puerto Rico, starred in the scene where this was featured in the movie, kicking off the number with the lines:
  
  Puerto Rico, my heart's devotion
  Let it sink back in the ocean
  
  According to Moreno, the original lyric was:
  
  Puerto Rico, you ugly island
  Island of tropical diseases
  
  This made her uncomfortable, but the line was changed before it became an issue.
• PJ Proby, who is best remembered these days for a notorious trouser-splitting incident at a 1965 London gig, scored a #8 in the UK with his version of the tune. The previous year he had a #6 on the UK charts with another cover of a West Side Story tune - "Somewhere."
• Stephen Sondheim gets Tony to sing "I'll never stop saying Maria" and he doesn't - 29 times.