Hubbell was born in
Urbana,
Ohio. He attended schools in Urbana and studied music in
Chicago, where he formed a dance band. He worked for
Charles K. Harris Publishers as a staff
arranger and
pianist. His first compositions for stage
musicals were the songs for
Chow Chow (lyrics and book by
Addison Burkhardt), which ran for 127 performances in Chicago in 1902. Renamed and revised as
The Runaways in 1903, the show ran for 167 days in New York and then toured for several years. Hubbell began composing music for the Ziegfeld Follies in 1911 and eventually scored seven editions. In 1915 he was hired as musical director for the
New York Hippodrome after the previous music director,
Manuel Klein, left abruptly after a disagreement with
Lee Shubert and
Jacob J. Shubert. Hubbell also wrote the score for "Good Times", which ran for 456 performances at the
New York Hippodrome. he thought his best song was "The Ladder of Roses", written for the 1915 Hippodrome hit,
Hip-Hip-Hooray. His last
Broadway work was the score for the 1928 musical
Three Cheers, starring
Will Rogers. In reviewing the show,
Brooks Atkinson wrote "Most of the music is unpretentiously melodious." Soon after he retired to
Miami, Florida. He was one of the nine founding members of
ASCAP in 1914. For 23 years he was head of the membership committee, and for 7 years was its treasurer. At the age of 50, Hubbell opted for retirement ==Death==