Responsible for America's love of creepy clowns and mop-haired pop groups. Image: Sweded.

Dearly Departed: American songwriter, producer and ex-president of Capitol Records, Alan W Livingston, 1917-2009.

Cause Of Death: “Age-related causes”.

Greatest Achievement: Livingston created Bozo The Clown, wrote ‘I Tawt I Taw A Puddy Tat’, signed Sinatra and brought the Beatles to America.

Like most songwriters and music execs, Alan W Livingston was virtually unknown outside the industry. But he was a pivotal figure in many cultural moments, from the Bozo The Clown sensation, to resurrecting Frank Sinatra’s career, to bringing the Beatles to the US and bearing responsibility for the notorious “Livingstone (sic) Butcher Cover” of Yesterday And Today.

Livingston was born into a musical Pennsylvanian family as Alan Wendell Levison. His mother encouraged the children to toy with instruments and his brother Jay went on to write ‘Que Sera Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)’, the theme from Bonanza and the Christmas staple ‘Silver Bells’. Alan moved to New York to work in advertising, then enlisted in the army to fight in WWII. After his discharge he hopped an army plane destined for Capitol Records in LA.

He was assigned to work on children’s records for the young record company. He created the archetypal Bozo The Clown character (also cited as the inspiration for Krusty The Clown) and invented read-along books to utilise him. Bozo was a monumental success and became a (now somewhat sinister) cultural icon.

During the same time as Bozo-mania gripped the US, Livingston also made a mint out of children’s recordings based around Disney and Warner Bros characters, and cowboy hero Hopalong Cassidy. His 1950 Hopalong Cassidy And The Singing Bandit album was the first children’s recording to make the top ten music charts.

Naturally, his success led him to the vice-presidency and then presidency of Capitol Records. In the early ’50s, when Frank Sinatra was in a career slump, Livingston signed him and engineered a hugely successful comeback.

He signed the US deal for the Beatles in 1963, releasing ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ and bringing them to tour America in 1964. He went on to sign the Beach Boys, Steve Miller, Pink Floyd, The Band, and Don McLean (yup, he’s responsible for ‘American Pie’) among others. As a side note, Capitol’s biggest sellers today are Katy Perry and Coldplay.

Throughout the next two decades, Livingston held senior positions in the entertainment industry: at his own film production company Mediarts Inc, Twentieth Century Fox, NBC, the Atalanta Investment Company and Pacific Rim Productions.

In 1988 Livingston published a novel about a rock sensation called Ronnie Finkelhof, Superstar and a decade later the International Clown Hall Of Fame (check it out, seriously creeptastic) awarded him with their Lifetime Of Laughter Achievement Award. Yet Livingston’s contributions to culture are far too significant for him to be lumped in with these clowns.

He will be missed.