R.I.P.: Dick Dodd

Dick Dodd, a Mouseketeer on Disney's original "Mickey Mouse Club" who went on to become a surf music pioneer and a youth-quaking garage rock showman, died Friday November 29, 2013. Dodd was 68.

In 1955, at the age of 9, he was cast on "The Mickey Mouse Club," the beloved television variety show that came to epitomize post-war America, alongside series regulars such as Annette Funicello and Cubby O'Brien. On the show, he was the Mouseketeer known as Dickie.

In the early 1960s, Dodd was a member of two of the earliest and most influential surf rock bands — the Bel-Airs, which nabbed a hit with the 1961 instrumental "Mr. Moto," and Eddie and the Showmen, which performed on the same bill as some of the luminaries of the era including the Beach Boys, Sonny and Cher and the Righteous Brothers.

But in 1964, Dodd took a musical left turn out of the mainstream to become drummer-vocalist in the garage rock band the Standells, known primarily for their popular single "Dirty Water". MORE HERE