Biography

Was one of Walt Disney's original Mouseketeers in 1955.

In 2006 he directed a live orchestra using authentic period orchestrations for the premiere screening of the newly restored silent version of Chicago (1927) at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences in Los Angeles.

While serving in the Army in the late 1960s, he appeared in a number of period training films remembered by veterans of the times.

With five Top 40 hits in the 1960s, his recording of "Cindy's Birthday" peaked at #8 on Billboard's Top 40 in 1962.

Had a key role in the early career of Victoria Jackson of Saturday Night Live (1975) fame. In 1980 she was a college student in Birmingham, AL, earning credit doing flip-flops as a member of the chorus, in a summer stock production of "Meet Me in St. Louis", featuring Crawford. He presented her with a one-way plane ticket and encouraged her to pursue a career in Hollywood. This led to her 22 appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962), before she was cast as a regular on Saturday Night Live (1975).

[about a concert given by his band] There were only about 50 people there, and they were all enjoying the band, and almost all were dancing. One fellow was standing off to the side watching for the longest time; it was Dustin Hoffman. He loved it. He said it reminded him of when he was a little boy and his parents took him to see Ted Lewis. Martin Short was a riot. He said, "I wanna sing with Johnny Crawford!".

[on his orchestrated band] It's a unique, romantic sound, and people love to hear it. It takes people back to an older America and a simpler, more elegant time. It's a sound I really love, and I find that once people get a chance to hear it live, in all its glory, that they love it, too.

[why he thinks his Mark McCain character on The Rifleman (1958) became popular with audiences] What boy wouldn't love dressing up as a cowboy and getting paid for it! It was hard work, and I took it very seriously as an actor, but I was living in a dream.

I always say that life is not easy for anybody. People hear about the young actors who have a rough life, but there are plenty of other kids who aren't actors who have a rough time, too, and I don't know if the ratio is any different.

[comparing his character on The Rifleman (1958) to his real-life role as a bandleader] The way I look at it, Mark McCain could have grown up to lead dance bands in the 1920s and '30s. As a young man who sang and played the guitar in two episodes, he might have made his way to Los Angeles, where there was lots of work for musicians in the early 1900s. By 1931, when he would have been the same age that I am now, he might have been leading his own band. I like to think he would have.