George Tipton

American composer, musical arranger and conductor,

Born January 23, 1932

Died February 12, 2016

George Aliceson Tipton worked in television composing the themes for the TV shows [i]Soap[/i] and its spinoff [i]Benson, It's a Living, I'm a Big Girl Now[/i] and [i]Empty Nest[/i], plus incidental music for numerous shows, including [i]The Courtship of Eddie's Father, Soap, The Love Boat, Heartland, The Golden Girls[/i] and [i]The Golden Palace[/i]. He also wrote music for the movies [i]Badlands[/i] and [i]Phantom of the Paradise[/i] and Harry Nilsson's animated film [i]The Point[/i], and for the television movies [i]The Affair, Hit Lady, I Want to Keep My Baby!, Mulligan's Stew, The Gift[/i] and [i]Gidget's Summer Reunion[/i]. He collaborated with singer-songwriter [a=Harry Nilsson].

His arranging and conducting credits include numerous hits by [a=Jan & Dean], [a=Sunshine Company] and [a=José Feliciano]'s hit cover version of "Light My Fire" by The Doors. He was one of the main arrangers on the albums of [a=Leonard Nimoy] during the late 1960s.

Tipton is arguably best-known in the pop-rock field for his work as an arranger on singles and albums recorded by singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson during the most productive phase of his career in the 1960s and early 1970s. They met ca. 1964 through music publisher [a=Perry Botkin], where Tipton worked as a copyist and their collaboration began when Tipton put up his life's savings ($2,500) to arrange and record four Nilsson tracks which they sold to Tower, a sub-label of Capitol Records; these tracks were subsequently included on the Spotlight on Nilsson LP. Tipton went on to arrange Nilsson's acclaimed early albums for RCA Records (1967–71), as well as his classic single "Everybody's Talkin'" (which won a Grammy Award), the [i]Skidoo[/i] soundtrack, and Nilsson's music for the TV series [i]The Courtship of Eddie's Father[/i] and the animated feature [i]The Point![/i].

In 1970 Tipton recorded a (now rare) LP of instrumental interpretations of Nilsson's music, [i]Nilsson by Tipton[/i] (Warner Bros. Records, 1970) which featured cover illustrations by [a=Dean Torrence]. However Tipton and Nilsson had an unexplained falling-out, and Tipton reportedly refused to be involved in the 2010 documentary on Nilsson's life and career. (from Wikipedia)