Folio-Grotesk breit halbfett (1959), the extended style of Bauer’s competitor to Helvetica, Univers & Co., for an album by the Ray Charles singers, produced by Enoch Light and released on Command Records. The cover art is by George Giusti, with art direction by Charles E. Murphy.

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See also Fever! from 1966 for another use of Folio by Murphy.

Tempestuous Trumpet is the first release by Doc Severinsen (b. 1927) under the name Doc Severinsen and His Orchestra. Produced by Enoch Light, the album was issued by Command Records in 1961. S. Neil Fujita’s cover design (with art direction from Charles E. Murphy) features an almost abstract illustration of the title. The triangular terminals in Ultra Bodoni echo the trumpet’s bell.

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See also Tony Mottola’s Spanish Guitar, another album with a cover designed by Fujita using Ultra Bodoni, as well as Severinsen’s Fever! from 1966, with cover art by George Giusti.

Originally released in 1958 with a different cover design, this is the 1966 reissue of an album recorded by country musicians Elton Britt (1912–1972) and Rosalie “Queen of Yodeling” Allen (1924–2003) with “Shorty” Warren (1913–2005) & His Western Rangers.

The typeface specified by art director Charles E. Murphy is Thorowgood Fat Italic. Note the differences between the sizes, in respect of the cupped stems (n r t) and the shape of the i dot.

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Source: recordcovers.wordpress.com Collecting Record Covers. License: All Rights Reserved.

Two years after Roman Accordion, Command Records released another album by Charles Magnante, with a similar title: for Romantic Accordion, art director Charles E. Murphy (1933–2005) did the illustration himself, apparently building on Giusti’s almost abstract accordion from 1963, adding movement, a rose, and a woman’s face.

The title typeface is an early creation by Photo-Lettering, shown in their 1960 catalog as Curfew Initials, with catalog number 0387. The underlying design with the trifurcated stems and decorative tendrils is a century older, though: PLINC’s face is based on an alphabet drawn and engraved by Jules Girault that was reproduced in his Album graphique from 1867.

Source: gallica.bnf.fr gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France. License: All Rights Reserved.

The original alphabet by Jules Girault as reproduced in his Album graphique from 1867

While the PLINC adaptation stays fairly close to Girault’s design, apart from a few omitted hairlines, Murphy apparently found it a little too romantic and over the top, and simplified the ornate caps for this application:

— A has one horizontal crossbar instead of two diagonal ones, and omits one tendril at mid stem
— C drops third the tendril in the lower part of the counter
— D and N lack one tendril to the left of the stem and two to the right
— I lacks two tendrils at mid stem
— M lacks two tendrils at the bottom half of the middle stem
— T replaces the round bottom part with a straight stem

Curfew Initials is contrasted with the down-to-earth Akzidenz-Grotesk for the artist’s name.

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Detail

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Caslon No. 540 in italic caps and roman for Roman Accordion, an album by Italian-American musician Charles Magnante (1905–1986), produced by Enoch Light and released on Command Records.

Cover design by George Giusti, with art direction by Charles E. Murphy.

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Re-issue from Pickwick Records, 1978

Ultra Bodoni and Torino, both in italics and all-lowercase letters, for a record by guitarist Tony Mottola (1918–2004), produced by Enoch Light and released by Command Records in 1962. Cover design by S. Neil Fujita with art direction from Charles E. Murphy.

For an earlier album by Mottola, Murphy invited George Giusti to design the cover art.

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Original release on Command Records, 1962

The fett weight of Volta, Konrad F. Bauer’s and Walter Baum’s wide Clarendon, in use on a typographic cover design by Charles E. Murphy a few years after it was first cast by Bauer in 1956.

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A relatively early use of Univers in the United States, for the cover of an album by the Ray Charles Singers, released on Command Records in 1961 and designed by the label’s art director, Charles E. Murphy. Adrian Frutiger’s seminal sans is used in the 55 (Regular) and 76 (Black Italic) styles.

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Two Pianos & Twenty Voices was released by Command Records in 1960. The cover was designed by the label’s long-time art director, Charles E. Murphy, with caps from what appears to be Modern No. 20, and a swashy ampersand that was taken from a larger size of Caslon 540 Italic.

A year before, Murphy had invited his former teacher Josef Albers to collaborate on a series of record covers which likewise feature patterns made from geometric shapes like circles and rectangles. For the cover shown here, Murphy did the art himself.

Lew Davies (1911–1968) was a bandleader, composer and arranger in New York City. In 1961, Davies and his orchestra released another album with Command. For the cover of Strange Interlude, Murphy asked S. Neil Fujita to create the art.

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The liner notes and track descriptions are set in Century Expanded, with headings in Trade Gothic.

The back cover features a number of typefaces, including Clarendon Condensed for “The greatest advance in sound” and Venus Italic for “for discriminating people”. The title in the box with the track listing is set in all-caps Torino, with side headings in Venus Extended. Production and design credits use Akzidenz-Grotesk.

Two light widths of Microgramma, neretta larga (extended) and neretta, used for the cover of String Band Strum-Along by jazz guitarist Tony Mottola, released by Command Records in 1961. A year later, Microgramma was revised and extended with a lowercase, now named Eurostile.

Art direction by Charles E. Murphy, with cover art by George Giusti.

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Fever! by Doc Severinsen, His Trumpet and Orchestra. Released by Command Records in 1966. Cover art by George Giusti, with art direction by Charles E. Murphy.

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Designed in 1958, according to robertbrownjohn.com. Art direction by Charles E. Murphy. Released in 1962, according to Discogs. Read more about this custom typeface by Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar in the Electric Circus use.

Spotted on Typophonic. The condensed grot appears to represent an early use of Inserat-Grotesk by Haas.

New Documents on Fab:

A 3-piece collection of designs by Josef Albers for his seminal series of Bauhaus cover designs for Command Records: Persuasive Percussion (1959), Provocative Percussion (1959) and Persuasive Percussion Volume 2 (1960).

Art Direction by Charles E. Murphy. Design by Josef Albers.

The sans is Standard Bold, see Akzidenz-Grotesk.