The Original Mickey Mouse Club Show  MMC Guest Star: Ralph Heid
(1946-2008)  The Hurricane of the Xylophone  Ralph Heid of
Switzerland was a world-reknowned xylophonist, a lightening-fast
musician who has been clocked at 1,000 strokes per minute. Born
in 1946, the son of a band leader and an opera singer, he
started playing the xylophone at age three, and a year later had
a professional contract with a theatre in Basel, Switzerland. As
a child he was known as "Master Ralph", the name by which he was
billed as a guest star on the Mickey Mouse Club's second season.
Coming to America  At age five Ralph started touring, playing
performances all over Western Europe. In 1954, a talent agent
arranged for him and his parents to come to North America.  "I
appeared at the Olympia Theatre, Paris, in 1954. An American
agent from New York, working for Lew & Leslie Grade Inc,
discovered me there and brought me to the States, together with
my parents. I appeared in a lot of fairground productions all
around the States and