Good Ole Time

By G.C.

PUMP BOYS AND DINETTES Music and lyrics by the performers

Some musicals--the good ones, that is--knock audiences off their feet with brassy numbers. Others touch their hearts with sentimental ballads. Pump Boys and Dinettes is different: it tickles the funny bone and makes everybody feel, just for the evening, like a good ole boy or a good ole girl. Country music, in other words, has come to Broadway.

The Pump Boys are the four fellows who ladle out the high octane on Highway 57, somewhere in the South. The Dinettes are the Cupp sisters, Prudie and Rhetta, who run the Double Cupp Diner next door. "Y'all come down to the Double Cupp," they sing, "where you know we'll treat you nice." Beyond that, the plot is as thin as a dime tip. Like many recent musicals--Sophisticated Ladies, for example--Pump Boys is a night of songs, 20 in all. Most have been written by Jim Warm, who also plays the chief gas jockey. If none are memorable, all are worth listening to, from a sultry Be Good or Be Gone, sung by Rhetta (Cass Morgan), to a very funny The Night Dolly Parton Was Almost Mine, sung by Mark Hardwick.

Parton's picture hangs prominently on the station wall, and her spirit is constantly invoked, as if she were the patron saint of such enterprises. Though the songs do not always have the authentic hillbilly twang, the spirit is right, as cheery, relaxed and amiable as the first really warm day of spring. Dolly would probably approve. --G.C.

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