Carole King’s classical training shines through in 'Beautiful,' now playing at Chanhassen

When you picture Carole King, the writer of colossal pop hits for countless artists, including herself, you probably envision her at the piano where she created the soundtrack — a tapestry, if you will — of the 1960s and ‘70s. King was a musical prodigy and her story — engagingly told in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, which is now playing at Chanhassen Dinner Theatres — starts when she plunked out her first notes as a 4-year-old.

 “The first piece of furniture in my parents’ home was a piano,” King writes in her 2012 autobiography, A Natural Woman.

She recalls relentlessly begging her mother, Genie Klein, to teach her the names of the notes, leading to lessons in piano and music theory before she learned to read. Her father, Sidney, who had “an ear for music” but only two songs in his piano repertoire (the warhorses “Heart and Soul” and “Chopsticks”), nevertheless identified young Carole’s ability to identify notes in her head. He called it perfect pitch; she amends it to “relative pitch,” but it's impressive, whatever it’s called.

Beautiful details King’s teenage hit-making success with husband Gerry Goffin (and friendly rivalry with songwriters Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann) up through her ascendancy as a solo artist. Along the way, hints of her early classical training pop up.

When she plays Genie the intro to her song “It Might as Well Rain Until September,” mother says to daughter, “Remember when you used to play Mozart? I’d be so proud if you played Mozart again.”

The line gets a big laugh — but perhaps the extravagantly talented King is a Mozart for our time.

After meeting Goffin at Queens College, King writes that she felt an instant connection because of their mutual love of jazz and show tunes. But trouble brews when she tells him she writes rock and roll songs, and he disparages her passion as just “lame-o teenybopper junk — what could you possibly say in a single that’s three minutes?”

He adds patronizingly, “You should listen to Bach sometime.”

King then sits at the piano in the student lounge and plays an etude by Johann Sebastian Bach, putting Goffin squarely in his place.

“It’s a very charming moment and shows that Carole really knows her stuff,” says Monet Sabel, who embodies King as the star of Chanhassen’s production.

Sabel grew up playing classical piano, also starting at 4.

“My ear for music became so developed because of my piano training. I went on to take Music Theory AP in high school, and I attribute my success in musical theater to my classical background,” she said.

“I can definitely feel a connection with Carole’s classical roots. I think a lot of us musicians started out the same way. It’s important to honor the history of the art form and learn from what came before us. The chord progressions in her songs are so unique (especially in the later stuff on Tapestry, like ‘It’s Too Late’) and it makes her pop songs way more exciting to our ears because of her base in the classics.”

One of the show’s most insightful scenes buttresses King’s classical bona fides. When she and Goffin write “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” for the Shirelles, lead singer Shirley Owens balks at recording it, wishing for a more elegant sound. She relents when it is proposed that a string section be added, which King then vows to achieve by the next day — and indeed, the following scene shows the Shirelles singing the song strings and all.

“Though I had previously written choral parts, I had never composed a string arrangement,” King writes. “But when Gerry suggested we use strings, I was fearless in volunteering. I knew how to write and read music. I would work out the parts on the piano and refer to an arranger’s handbook for transposition and range.”

Douglas McGrath, who wrote the book for Beautiful, included the story as somewhat of a running gag. In admiration of King, he said, “If the Shirelles said they would only sing the song if Carole would orchestrate it with strings, Carole went to the library, got a book on orchestrating with strings and did it.”

(Goffin, who by 1971 was her ex-husband, presented King with a copy of the pivotal book backstage before her Carnegie Hall debut.)

“Oh yes! She is the epitome of resilience and determination,” Sabel says of that story. “It’s such a testament to how she knew what was right and would fight for that, even if it meant learning an entirely new skill to get a famous group to say yes to the song.”

Sabel adds, “I know how hard it is to have a successful career in the arts; we are all constantly fighting for the next gig, and how to prove ourselves in a world full of talent. So it’s even more inspiring to me that she made herself heard as a female in a previously male-dominated space.”

Event details

What: Beautiful: The Carole King Musical
Where: Chanhassen Dinner Theatres
When: Through Sept. 28.
Tickets: $55-$85 (show only); 75-$105 (with dinner)
More info