George Tipton

American composer, arranger, and conductor George Tipton has done most of his work for television, creating the themes for shows like Benson, It’s a Living, and Empty Nest as well as incidental music for Soap, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, The Love Boat, Heartlands, The Golden Girls, and several television movies, as well as music for Phantom of the Paradise and Badlands on the big screen. He also worked with several recording artists, most notably Harry Nilsson. With his background as a television soundtrack and jingles arranger, but also possessing a deep knowledge of the history of jazz and popular orchestration, Tipton was the perfect collaborator for Nilsson in the late '60s, bringing Nilsson's wonderfully skewed sense of pop to life on a series of classic albums that flirted with commercial appeal even as they undermined that appeal with deliberate quirkiness and a wink of the eye. Tipton released a charming album of Nilsson tunes reassembled and reshaped as jazzy MOR instrumental fare in 1970 called Nilsson by Tipton. ~ Steve Leggett