Cubby O'Brien

Last updated
Cubby O'Brien
The Mickey Mouse Club Cubby O'Brien 1956.jpg
O'Brien as a Mouseketeer on
The Mickey Mouse Club , c. 1956
Born
Carl Patrick O'Brien

(1946-07-14) July 14, 1946 (age 77)
Burbank, California, U.S.
Years active1955–present
Spouse(s)Marilyn Miller (1967–1976)
Terry Wilemon (1978–1999)
Holly Sims (2002–present)
Children1

Carl "Cubby" Patrick O'Brien (born July 14, 1946), better known by his nickname Cubby, is an American drummer and former child actor. He is known as one of the original Mouseketeers on the weekday ABC television program The Mickey Mouse Club from 1955 to 1958.

Contents

Early life

O'Brien was the third son of musician Haskell "Hack" O'Brien, a well-known drummer for several big band era ensembles. When he was an infant, his mother thought he resembled a bear cub, and gave him his lifelong nickname. He has two older brothers: Haskell O'Brien, Jr., a trumpet player; and Warren O'Brien, also a drummer. [1]

Although born in Burbank, O'Brien grew up in the Los Angeles suburb of Shadow Hills, between Sun Valley and Sunland. He began studying music at the Carl Babcock School of Music from age five, and later performed with the Roger Babcock Dixieland Band at charity events and for local television. In 1962 he graduated from Hollywood Professional School, where he was president of his class.

Career

O'Brien, like Annette Funicello, was personally selected to audition for The Mickey Mouse Club by Walt Disney, in the spring of 1955. Disney was alerted to him by a staff member who caught his live performance at a charity gala. [2]

Though he had little prior singing or dancing experience, O'Brien was placed on The Mickey Mouse Club's first-string "Red Team" right from the start. He quickly picked up enough dance skills to perform in musical numbers, though his solo performances remained centered around his drums. He remained with the show for all three seasons (1955–1958) of original programming. When filming ended, he went on live-performance tours with other Mouseketeers to Australia in 1959 and 1960.

Following Disney, he joined the Lawrence Welk organization for two years, often doing duets with Janet Lennon. Having performed with the "Little Band", doing guest bits on the maestro's show, as well as other television series. After graduating from high school, he started touring with Spike Jones, playing show tunes and dance music with the formerly manic bandleader's final group. He then played for Ann-Margret in her live performances, and in the late Sixties returned to television as the sometime on-camera drummer for CBS's The Carol Burnett Show .

O'Brien was also music director for the LA touring companies of the Broadway hits Hair and Oh, Calcutta! in the early Seventies, and often fulfilled the same role for other engagements where his primary responsibility was drumming.

The Carpenters

Beginning in 1973, O'Brien joined The Carpenters as a touring drummer, due to public demand for Karen Carpenter to sing at the front instead of from behind the drum kit. Despite this scenario, Karen still played drums live during this period, although rarely and mostly on B-side songs, with Hal Blaine and other professional studio percussionists performing on the group's recordings. Sharing a love of percussion, O'Brien at one point introduced Carpenter to big band drummer Buddy Rich. [3] His tenure with the band lasted until the 1980s.

O'Brien was a contestant on the ABC game show The Big Showdown in the mid-1970s, winning $5,000 for rolling "Show Down" during the timed dice roll round.

In 1980, O'Brien reunited with his fellow Mouseketeers for a television special, in which he sang, danced and played drums. He also joined some of these same Mouseketeers for live shows on fall weekends at Disneyland during the early 1980s.

Since the eighties, O'Brien's career has predominated around performing for Broadway productions, as well as for live shows by performers like Bernadette Peters. He based himself out of New York City instead of the West Coast for many years, though he has since moved back.

Personal life

Cubby met his first wife, Marilyn Miller, while touring with Spike Jones. They were married around 1966, and had a daughter together before divorcing around 1976. In 1978, Cubby married Terry Wilemon, whom he met in Las Vegas while touring with the Carpenters. That too ended in divorce, in 1999. He married for the third time in 2002, to Holly Sims, a Portland-based flight attendant. Cubby lives in the Pacific Northwest and still works constantly, playing drums for various touring Broadway shows, and with Bernadette Peters. He has taken part in many of the Mouseketeer Reunion shows, including the 50th Anniversary in 2005, but usually is too busy drumming to make personal appearances. [4]

Filmography

Television credits

Broadway credits

Discography

With Milt Jackson

With The Carpenters

Related Research Articles

<i>The Mickey Mouse Club</i> American variety television show

The Mickey Mouse Club is an American variety television show that aired intermittently from 1955 to 1996 and returned to social media in 2017. Created by Walt Disney and produced by Walt Disney Productions, the program was first televised for four seasons, from 1955 to 1959, by ABC. This original run featured a regular, but ever-changing cast of mostly teen performers. ABC broadcast reruns weekday afternoons during the 1958–1959 season, airing right after American Bandstand. The show was revived three times after its initial 1955–1959 run on ABC, first from 1977 to 1979 for first-run syndication as The New Mickey Mouse Club, then from 1989 to 1996 as The All-New Mickey Mouse Club airing exclusively on cable television's The Disney Channel, and again in 2017 with the moniker Club Mickey Mouse airing exclusively on internet social media. It ended in 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Annette Funicello</span> American actress, singer (1942–2013)

Annette Joanne Funicello was an American actress and singer. Funicello began her professional career as a child performer at the age of twelve. She was one of the most popular Mouseketeers on the original Mickey Mouse Club. In her teenage years, she recorded under the name Annette, and had a successful career as a pop singer. Her most notable singles are "O Dio Mio", "First Name Initial", "Tall Paul", and "Pineapple Princess". During the mid-1960s, she established herself as a film actress, popularizing the successful "Beach Party" genre alongside co-star Frankie Avalon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karen Carpenter</span> American singer and drummer (1950–1983)

Karen Anne Carpenter was an American singer and drummer who formed half of the highly successful duo the Carpenters with her older brother Richard. With a distinctive three-octave contralto range, she was praised by her peers for her vocal skills. Carpenter's work continues to attract praise, including appearing on Rolling Stone's 2010 list of the 100 greatest singers of all time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. Pat O'Malley</span> English actor (1904–1985)

James Rudolph O'Malley was an English character actor and singer who appeared in many American films and television programmes from the 1940s to 1982, using the stage name J. Pat O'Malley. He also appeared on the Broadway stage in Ten Little Indians (1944) and Dial M for Murder (1954).

<i>The Lawrence Welk Show</i> American weekly TV variety series (1951–1982)

The Lawrence Welk Show is an American televised musical variety show hosted by big band leader Lawrence Welk. The series aired locally in Los Angeles for four years, from 1951 to 1955, then nationally for another 16 years on ABC from 1955 to 1971, followed by 11 years in first-run syndication from 1971 to 1982. Repeat episodes are broadcast in the United States by Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) stations. These airings incorporate an original program—usually, a color broadcast from 1965 to 1982—in its entirety. In place of the commercials, newer performance and interview clips from the original stars and/or a family member of the performers are included; these clips are occasionally updated.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jimmie Dodd</span> American actor (1910–1964)

James Wesley Dodd was an American actor, singer and songwriter best known as the master of ceremonies for the popular 1950s Walt Disney television series The Mickey Mouse Club, as well as the writer of its well-known theme song "The Mickey Mouse Club March." A different version of this march, much slower in tempo and with different lyrics, became the alma mater that closed each episode.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sherry Alberoni</span> American actress

Sharyn Eileen "Sherry" Alberoni is a former American child actress. She got her start as a Mouseketeer on the weekday ABC television program The Mickey Mouse Club. As an adult, Alberoni became a voice artist for Hanna-Barbera Productions. Besides providing voices for numerous incidental characters in series such as Jeannie, Alberoni is best known as the voice of nasty rich-girl Alexandra Cabot from Josie and the Pussycats; "superhero-in-training" Wendy from the first season of Super Friends; the heroic robot Bo in Mighty Orbots; and Glumdalclitch in The Three Worlds of Gulliver. In 1971, she starred alongside Patty Andrews in the Sherman Brothers stage musical, Victory Canteen.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karen Pendleton</span> American actress (1946–2019)

Karen Anita Pendleton was an original Mickey Mouse Club Mouseketeer on the ABC television series from 1955 to 1959. She was one of only nine Mouseketeers who were on the show during its entire original run.

Allison Fonte is an American actress and pianist who was a 12- to 13-year-old mousketeer of seasons 5-6 of the television show The Mickey Mouse Club, a 1977 revival of the Disney television show that had originally aired between 1955 and 1959.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bobby Burgess</span> American dancer and singer (born 1941)

Robert Wilkie Burgess is an American dancer and singer. He was one of the original Mouseketeers. Later, he was a regular on The Lawrence Welk Show.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Darlene Gillespie</span> American actress and singer

Darlene Faye Gillespie is a Canadian-American former child actress, most remembered as a singer and dancer on the original The Mickey Mouse Club television series from 1955 to 1959. After her career in entertainment ended, she became a nurse.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doreen Tracey</span> English actress

Doreen Isabelle Tracey was a British-born American performer who appeared on the original Mickey Mouse Club television show from 1955 to 1959.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kevin Corcoran</span> American actor and film director (1949–2015)

Kevin Anthony "Moochie" Corcoran was an American child actor, director and producer. He appeared in numerous Disney projects between 1957 and 1963, leading him to be honored as a Disney Legend in 2006. His nickname, Moochie, established him as an irrepressible character in film.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sharon Baird</span> American actress

Sharon Baird is an American actress, voice actress, singer, dancer and puppeteer who is best known for having been a Mouseketeer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chase Hampton</span>

Chasen Cord Hampton is an American actor, performer, singer, songwriter, musician, and mentor.

Leonard "Lonnie" Mark Burr is an American actor, entertainer and writer best known as one of nine of the original thirty-nine Mouseketeers who remained under a seven-year contract for the complete filming (1955–1959) of Walt Disney’s children’s television show the Mickey Mouse Club. The Mickey Mouse Club was the first national TV show to star children who appeared primarily as themselves as well as acting as characters in scenes and musical numbers. The original show aired in syndication in the 1960s, reran again in 1975, then on the Disney Channel in the 1980s through the early 2000s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tommy Cole</span> American actor and singer

Tommy Cole is an American make-up artist, actor, and singer who appeared as a Mouseketeer on the Mickey Mouse Club television series.

Robert Vernor Hammack, Jr. was an American musician, originally from Texas, whose principal instrument was jazz piano. He led a prolific career in Los Angeles as a pianist, organist, conductor, arranger, and composer in (i) live venues, (ii) broadcast studios for radio and television, and (iii) recording studios for records, radio, television, and film. Hammack flourished in a wide spectrum of genres that included dixieland, Blues, swing, sweet dance music (e.g., Lawrence Welk), easy listening, gospel, liturgical jazz, musical theatre, Tin Pan Alley, classical, and film score.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dick Dodd</span> American actor and musician (1945–2013)

Joseph Richard Dodd Jr. was an American actor and musician who was a cast member of The Mickey Mouse Club starting in its first season, and later a member of several musical groups including The Standells. He was the lead singer on that band's 1966 Billboard hit, "Dirty Water", which includes the refrain "...Boston, you're my home".

"Mickey's 50" is a 1978 television special honouring the 50-year anniversary of the debut of Walt Disney's animated character Mickey Mouse. The show aired on NBC on November 19, 1978, one day after Mickey's official birthday, as a special 90-minute edition of The Wonderful World of Disney.

References

  1. ↑ Walt Disney's Magazine, Vol II No 6, October 1957, pg 9
  2. ↑ Forever Hold Your Banner High, by Jerry Bowles, 1976, pg 96 ISBN   0-385-11622-5
  3. ↑ Modern Drummer, May 1983, "Karen Carpenter: A Drummer Who Sang" by Rod Fogarty
  4. ↑ The Dallas Observer, October 31, 1996, Music Section, "Not So Mickey Mouse" by Laurel Ornish
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.