Prolific poet and songwriter dubbed the ‘King of Kitsch’

NEW YORK — Rod McKuen, the husky-voiced “King of Kitsch” whose avalanche of music, verse and spokenword recordings in the 1960s and ’70s overwhelmed critical mockery and made him an Oscar-nominated songwriter and one of the bestselling poets in history, has died. He was 81.

McKuen died Thursday morning at a rehabilitation centre in Beverly Hills, Calif., where he had been treated for pneumonia and had been ill for several weeks and was unable to digest food, said his half-brother Edward McKuen Habib.

Until his sabbatical in 1981, McKuen was an astonishingly successful and prolific force in popular culture, turning out hundreds of songs, poems and records. Sentimental, earnest and unashamed, he conjured a New Age spirit world that captivated those who didn’t ordinarily like poetry and those who craved relief from the war, assassinations and riots of the time.

“I think it’s a reaction people are having against so much insanity in the world,” he once said. “I mean, people are really all we’ve got. You know it sounds kind of corny, and I suppose it’s a cliché, but it’s really true. That’s just the way it is.”

His best-known songs, some written with the Belgian composer Jacques Brel, include Birthday Boy, A Man Alone, If You Go Away and Seasons In the Sun, a chart-topper in 1974 for Terry Jacks.

He was nominated for Oscars for Jean from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and for A Boy Named Charlie Brown, the title track from the beloved Peanuts movie.

Frank Sinatra, Madonna, Dolly Parton and Chet Baker were among the many artists who recorded his material, although McKuen often handled the job himself, in a hushed, throaty style he honed after an early life as a rock singer cracked his natural tenor.

McKuen is credited with more than 200 albums — dozens of which went gold or platinum — and more than 30 collections of poetry. Worldwide sales for his music top 100 million units while his book sales exceed 60 million copies.