On Feb. 4, 1982, Pump Boys & Dinettes opened on Broadway. Friends Jim Wann and Mark Hardwick began writing the show while working at New York’s Cattleman restaurant. “Our mission was to play country standards to entertain the ‘tired businessman’ who had come for the drinks, the steaks, and the waitresses in classic Western saloon girl attire,” Wann explained. “On slow nights, we’d play original songs I was writing for Mark’s emerging comic persona.” Meanwhile, friends Cass Morgan and Debra Monk were developing the Cupp Sisters for a cabaret act. Once in a while, the Dinettes would join the Pump Boys at the Cattleman, who “soon grew tired of this nonsense and showed us the saloon door,” Wann said, but he and Hardwick continued to develop Pump Boys and Dinettes.
The first performance of the show Pump Boys and Dinettes was at New York’s Chelsea West Side Arts Theatre in summer 1981. It told the story of four Pump Boys (L.M., Jackson, Jim, and Eddie) and two Dinettes (sisters Prudie and Rhetta Cupp) at the Double Cupp Diner, somewhere between Frog Level and Smyrna, North Carolina, who perform country rock on instruments and kitchen utensils. The show moved to the Off-Broadway Colonnades Theatre on Oct. 13, 1981, then to Broadway’s Princess Theatre in February, closing June 18, 1983, after 573 performances. The Broadway production received a Tony nomination for best musical and Drama Desk nominations for outstanding musical, featured actor (Hardwick), lyrics, and music. Below, Tony Randall introduces the cast in a medley at the 1982 Tonys.
CBS Records released the original cast album, and the track “The Night Dolly Parton Was Almost Mine” reached #67 on the Hot Country Songs chart. NBC aired a pilot on Aug. 15, 1983, for a potential TV series featuring the Broadway cast, with special guests Ron Carey and Tanya Tucker, but the network never ordered the series. The following year, the show opened on London’s West End, where it ran from Sept. 20, 1984, to Sept. 2, 1985, featuring Paul Jones, Clodagh Rodgers, Joe Brown, Brian Protheroe, Carlene Carter, and Kiki Dee. The show was revived in New York on July 16, 2014, for five performances as part of City Center’s Encores! Off-Center concert series, featuring Hunter Foster, Mamie Parris, Randy Redd, Katie Thompson, and Jordan Dean. Below is a clip of that production.