Rod McKuen, the husky-voiced ‘king of kitsch’, whose music, verse and spoken-word recordings in the 1960s and 1970s won him an Oscar nomination and made him one of the bestselling poets in history, has died.

McKuen, 81, died at a rehabilitation clinic in Beverly Hills, California, where he had been treated for pneumonia. He had been ill for several weeks and was unable to digest food, his half-brother, Edward McKuen Habib, said.

Until his sabbatical in 1981, McKuen was an astonishingly successful and prolific force in popular culture, turning out hundreds of songs and poems and records, including the Academy Award-nominated song Jean for the 1969 film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

Sentimental, earnest and unashamed, he conjured a New Age spirit world that captivated those who did not ordinarily like poetry

Sentimental, earnest and unashamed, he conjured a New Age spirit world that captivated those who did not 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 said. “I mean, people are really all we’ve got. You know it sounds kind of corny, and I suppose it’s a cliche, 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 an Oscar for Jean and for A Boy Named Charlie Brown, the title track for 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 had honed after an early life as a rock singer cracked his natural tenor.