George Tipton

George Aliceson Tipton (January 23, 1932 – February 12, 2016) was an American composer, musical arranger, conductor, and Broadway performer whose career spanned stage, television, and recorded music.

Tipton appeared on Broadway between 1961 and 1968, with credits including Kwamina and Hair. His stage work ran parallel to a prolific career in music that extended across multiple decades and media.

In the recording industry, Tipton built a reputation as an arranger and conductor, contributing to hits by Jan and Dean, The Sunshine Company, and Jose Feliciano, including Feliciano's celebrated cover of "Light My Fire." He also served as one of the principal arrangers on the albums Leonard Nimoy recorded during the late 1960s. His path into the music business included work as a copyist for music publisher Perry Botkin Jr., where he first encountered singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson around 1964. To launch their collaboration, Tipton invested his entire savings of $2,500 to arrange and record four Nilsson tracks, which were subsequently sold to Tower Records, a Capitol Records subsidiary, and later appeared on the Spotlight on Nilsson LP.

Tipton went on to arrange Nilsson's early albums for RCA Records between 1967 and 1971, a body of work that represents his most recognized contribution to popular music. Among those projects were the Skidoo soundtrack, music composed for the television series The Courtship of Eddie's Father, and the score for the animated feature The Point!. He also arranged Nilsson's single "Everybody's Talkin'," which received a Grammy Award in 1969. In 1970, Tipton released Nilsson by Tipton on Warner Bros. Records, an album of instrumental interpretations of Nilsson's compositions featuring cover artwork by Dean Torrence. The two men later had an unexplained falling-out, and Tipton declined to participate in the 2010 documentary about Nilsson's life and career.

Tipton's work in television was equally extensive. He composed theme music for Soap and its spinoff Benson, as well as for It's a Living, I'm a Big Girl Now, and Empty Nest. His incidental music credits include The Courtship of Eddie's Father, Soap, Mulligan's Stew, The Love Boat, Heartland, The Golden Girls, and The Golden Palace. For film and television film, he scored Badlands (1973) and a series of television movies including Home for the Holidays (1972), The Affair (1973), The Stranger Who Looks Like Me (1974), The Gun and the Pulpit (1974), Hit Lady (1974), Griffin and Phoenix (1976), Red Alert (1977), The Gift (1979), Christmas Lilies of the Field (1979), and Gidget's Summer Reunion (1985).

Tipton died on February 12, 2016, at the age of 84.