Broadway comebacks: how a small label has come to the rescue of long-defunct Broadway shows.

Anyone who thinks each new Broadway musical automatically gets an original-cast recording is still living in 1951. Long gone are the days when the cast and orchestra of every Broadway show, hit or flop, showed up ready for work in the recording studio on the first Monday after opening night. If Classical takes up but a small slice of the recording-industry pie these days, musicals get barely a crumb.

That's where PS Classics, Inc., comes to the rescue. Devoted to preserving our musical-theater heritage, this small but shrewd company has stepped up to record recent shows such as Sondheim's Assassins and the latest Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof. But it's 'also found an affordable way to restore, record and distribute studio versions of rare landmark musicals. By obtaining not-for-profit status, PS Classics can now accept tax-deductible financial support from musical-comedy fans who are eager to hear the scores of shows that were never recorded. The company's inaugural studio-cast recording is a Broadway buff's dream: Fine and Dandy, the 1930 Kay Swift-Paul James hit. Boasting a strong cast of New York theater stars such as Carolee Carmello, Mario Cantone, Gavin Creel and Mark Linn-Baker, the show now shines like a long-lost gem. With its jaunty tunes, witty lyrics and saxophone-ringed jazz-age arrangements, it exemplifies the kind of sophisticated, insouciant entertainment prized by New York audiences of that era.

Record producer Tommy Krasker and actor/singer Philip Chaffin, partners in business and life, operate PS Classics, Inc., out of their 1910 home in Bronxville, New York. "Now that original-cast albums of contemporary musicals have such a small audience," says Chaffin, "you can imagine how much smaller the audience is for studio-cast recordings of rare shows. But this limited public is a very devoted one--an audience like ourselves that believes these musicals need to be restored and preserved. So although we've been receiving corporate and arts funding, the fan who contributes $25 through our website is just as important to us."

Restoring Fine and Dandy was a task that spread over three decades. The original show, about the romantic entanglements among a group of tool-and-dye-factory employees, was a hit with critics and the public, but its full score and orchestration were never properly preserved. Like most Broadway entertainments of the era, the show was perceived as an expendable commodity, one made for running a season on Broadway, then touring for a year. Fortunately, Russell Warner, perhaps the foremost living Broadway musical-orchestration ...