In 1960, the Shirelles recorded “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” which turned out to be the first No. 1 hit by a young, married songwriting team, Carole King and Gerry Goffin. Their marriage ended in 1968, but the pop music world continued to love their work, and the songs Ms. King continued to write, for decades.
Now Ms. King’s music, along with her life story, is headed for Broadway. “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” is scheduled to open in spring 2014, with a pre-Broadway run at the end of this year, the producers announced on Friday. The show will have a book by Douglas McGrath, whose screenplay for “Bullets Over Broadway,” written with Woody Allen, was nominated for an Oscar in 1995. Paul Blake and Sony/ATV Music Publishing are the producers. The casting has not yet been announced. The musical score will include songs by Ms. King and Mr. Goffin, as well as by their contemporaries, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.
Ms. King’s dozens of hits include Little Eva’s “Loco-Motion,” Aretha Franklin’s “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” James Taylor’s “You’ve Got a Friend,” not to mention 25 albums of her own.
“What’s so great about this for me,” she said in a statement, “is that musicals were a major influence on my songwriting. In fact, when Gerry and I first met, we made a bargain that I would write music for the Broadway show he wanted to write if he wrote lyrics for my rock ‘n’ roll songs. The songs took off, and the show idea never came to fruition. Now that our songs have merged with a Broadway show, we’ve come full circle.”