Josh Dawson grew up listening to Carole King songs.
“I grew up in the church and didn’t listen to a lot of secular music, but I did listen to Carole King and Phoebe Snow,” said Dawson who has been acting his entire life.
So when he landed the part as one of the Drifters in the touring company of “Beautiful,” he was ecstatic. The message of finding something beautiful in darkness really hit home for Dawson.
“Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” tells the true-life story of Carole King’s rise to musical stardom from being a member of the hit songwriting team, to her friendship with fellow lyricists Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann to becoming one of the most successful songwriters in history.
King wrote her first No. 1 hit, along with her husband, Gerry Goffin, “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” for the Shirelles, at the age of 17. The pair wrote countless numbers of hits during the 1950s. After the couple’s fairytale romance and collaboration began to crumble, King left New York for California to record 1971’s “Tapestry” which begin her great solo musical success. More than 400 of her compositions have been recorded by more than 1,000 artists resulting in 100 hit singles and six Grammy Awards.
King and Goffin met at Queens College in 1939 and began their romance and songwriting magic almost immediately. The couple married in 1959 and penned more than 50 top-10 hits including, “The Locomotion.” Both King and Goffin were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.
“Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,” which premiered in 2013, won two 2014 Tony Awards and the cast recording snagged the 2015 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album.
King had a large influence on African American music she penned songs for such groups as The Drifters, the Shirelle’s, Janelle Woods and others.
“She wrote songs that Donnie Hathaway and Roberta Flack sang,” explained Dawson who cut his performance teeth in church but learned about other forms of music from his maternal grandmother, aunts and uncles who traveled around the country performing.
King’s tremendous song catalogue includes “You’ve Got a Friend,” “(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman,” “On Broadway,” “Up On the Roof,” “One Fine Day” and “Some Kind of Wonderful.”
“This was one of the first times that you saw a predominately White group writing and being able to influence Black culture. They had an understanding and a love for Black culture that allowed them to write such melodies,” Dawson said. “One of the things that I respect so much about Carole King and her writing is that it is heavily influenced by Gospel and Blues. It is so influenced with that and I love that.”
“Beautiful: The Carole King Muscial” stopped at the Benedum Center, Oct. 27–Nov. 1, as part of the PNC Broadway Across America Pittsburgh series. The series presents award-winning productions direct from the Broadway stage.
The show featured Abby Mueller as Carole King, Suzannw Grooner as Genie Klein, Liam Tobin as Gerry Goffin, Becky Gulsvig as Cynthia Weil and Ben Fankhauser as Barry Mann.
During the show’s intermission on the opening night of its Pittsburgh run, audience members were humming the songs as they traveled to and from their seats. After the show ended, people were saying they didn’t know King had written many of the songs in the musical—songs that undoubtedly shaped some of the most important moments of their lives.
“I’m so honored to deliver these songs the way people remember them. To be able to do this and perform in these major markets is amazing,” said Rebecca Covington who portrays Janelle Woods and a member of the Shirelles in “Beautiful.” “We collectively get goose bumps every single time. We don’t take this for granted. A lot of these groups played at gymnasiums in the 1950s and in back woods clubs and now we’re able to perform in places like the Kennedy Center and the Benedum Center in Pittsburgh. We hope we can be the doorway for some young girl who wants to sing to see us and say ‘I can do that.’ That’s what it’s all about.”
Covington, who hails from Lexington, Ky., and graduated from Belmont University, started her performing career in high school as part of the youth orchestra’s violin section. After seeing “Miss Saigon” and “West Side Story, her heart was set on making a career in musical theater.
“Our audiences was tremendously blessed by the messages in this show,” Dawson said. “Carole King was a pioneer. She took on the mantle when it wasn’t popular. She’s an early Sara Barelles or Alicia Keys.”
“Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” will tour North America until the summer of 2016.
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