You probably don’t have to be a fan of Carole King’s music to appreciate the Asolo Rep’s season opening production, Beautiful—The Carole King Musical. But then why would you not be a fan, given the quality and quantity of music this veteran songwriter has produced during her career?

Depending on your age, you may remember most fondly the pop hits from the 1950s and ’60s co-written with King’s then-husband, Gerry Goffin, or prefer the more personal sounds of one of the most successful record albums ever, King’s Tapestry. Either way, you’ll get to hear a bunch of them in this show, which takes us on a journey from late 1950s Brooklyn to the Laurel Canyon of the ’70s.

As a biographical jukebox type of musical, with book by Douglas McGrath and original songs from not only Goffin and King but friendly competitors Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, one can never be certain how close to the truth Beautiful is. Surely some liberties have been taken, but there’s heart and humor here, along with the outstanding songs.

The show begins with King (Julia Knitel, who grabs us from the outset and holds us throughout) at a grand piano in Carnegie Hall, singing “So Far Away” and, accordingly, then taking a look back to her teenage self, determined to sell a song to music impresario Donny Kirschner (Matthew Bryan Feld). Her mother, Genie (Anne L. Nathan), is supportive, although she considers that teaching would be a safer profession. Carole is only 16, but she knows what she wants, musically speaking, and has the rare talent to achieve it.

She’s also sure she wants Goffin (Devin Archer, playing with a mix of swagger and uncertainty), and even though they are both very young, when Carole gets pregnant, they get married and combine parenthood with churning out winners for groups like the Shirelles, the Drifters and others. Along the way they meet fellow writers Mann (Ryan Vona) and Weil (Emma Flynn Bespolka), also among the most prolific of tunesmiths for decades.

In the pattern of the show, often all those hit songs are first delivered in a solo or duo fashion at the piano, during their creation, then rendered with bigger orchestration and choreography (by Banji Aborisade) by the ensemble cast members. For the most part, there isn’t time for a lot of characterization: Mann is a funny hypochondriac, Weil stylish and independent, Goffin a womanizer with mental health issues and King a self-confessed “square” who doesn’t fit into the sex and drugs music scene. It’s pretty much broad strokes here, but the actors do what they can within the constraints of the script, which needs to move along to fit more than two dozen musical numbers in.

And those numbers, from “Some Kind of Wonderful” and “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” to “You’ve Got a Friend” and “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” are bound to evoke lots of memories. They’re ably delivered by the cast, under the direction of Shelley Butler and music direction of Angela Steiner, and the audience even gets into the act with the closing number, “I Feel the Earth Move.” There’s heartbreak and triumph for King in Beautiful, and happy moments, too, for us.

Beautiful—The Carole King Musical continues through Jan. 5 at the Asolo’s Mertz Theatre. For tickets, call (941) 351-8000 or visit asolorep.org.