Daily Inspiration Quote by Cy Coleman

It lands like a throwaway industry gripe, but it’s really a quiet horror story about cultural memory: the work exists, people want it, yet the material key to its afterlife has slipped into a corporate sinkhole. Coleman’s “I’m trying” does a lot of work. It frames him not as a legend with a vault, but as a supplicant navigating the wreckage of labels that treated recordings as inventory, not heritage. The ellipses feel like someone talking around a bruise.

The phrase “went bust” is blunt, almost casual, which is exactly why it stings. Bankruptcies aren’t just balance-sheet events; they’re mass extinctions for archives. Masters aren’t merely better-sounding copies. They’re the source code of a performance: the thing you need to remaster, reissue, preserve, or even prove ownership. When Coleman says he doesn’t know “where to get” them, the subtext is that the chain of custody has been severed. Rights may still be litigated, but the actual tape could be mislabeled in a warehouse, sold off in a liquidation lot, or simply tossed.

Coming from a Broadway composer, the context matters: musical theater survives through revival, recording, and re-discovery. This is Coleman, late in life, confronting how quickly the industry that profited from his work can misplace it. The intent isn’t self-pity; it’s a practical plea that doubles as an indictment of a system built to monetize art in the present tense, with no real plan for tomorrow.