Erotica 74 is an adult book by Lawrence Mosley, published in 1974 by Bee-Line Books.

The title uses Green Buzzard B. The tagline and author’s name use Gill Sans Extra Bold. The publisher name, serial number and price use News Gothic.

Funky Chicken is the debut album release by Chicago-based soul singer, producer/arranger. and saxophone player Willie Henderson (b. 1941), recorded with the Soul Explosions and released in 1970 on Brunswick Records.

The amorphous typeface chosen for the title is Fantasia, drawn by John Theodore for Photo-Lettering by 1969.

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2023 reissue on yellow vinyl by Org Music

Front cover featuring the boys hitching a carpet ride - with their group name and the album title set in Photo-Lettering's Green Buzzard, released earlier in 1970.

Get Into Something (1970) is the Isley Brothers’ eighth studio album and their third on T-Neck, the label they founded six years earlier (at the time, it was distributed by Buddah Records). The album followed the double whammy of It’s Our Thing and The Brothers: Isley, both released in 1969.

The album’s title track includes some very impressive breakbeats (someone should sample them!) by George Moreland, and the track “Keep On Doin’” was interpolated without credit by James Brown into “The Grunt” by the JBs the same year.

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Back cover featuring the group name and album title (still set in Buzzard) in a significantly larger size – group name in purple, album title in black. Track list and credits set in Helvetica Medium.

Inner gatefold featuring the Isleys (although… two-thirds of them are seen in this photo, Ron unfortunately isn’t). Names and availability notice set in Helvetica Medium.

The History of Rhythm & Blues vinyl record series is a 1960s compilation of various R&B records from various eras. The first volume covers the roots era (i.e., 1947-1952).

Two swashy typefaces from PLINC are used for the main title: PLINC Bookman Swash and West Behemoth Italic Swash.

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A fine Use of all-caps West Nouveau Didot for the cover of The Mean Machine, an album by jazz organist Jimmy McGriff (1936–2008) released on Groove Merchant in 1976. Printed in pale violet and yellow, the curly letters nicely echo the ornamentation on the musician’s garment.

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The Mind of a Mnemonist presents the psychological case of Solomon Shereshevsky, a.k.a. “S.”, a man with highly advanced memory.

From the inner flap:

Written by Alexander Romanovich Luria (1902–1977) – often is credited as a father of modern neuropsychology – the book was translated to the English by Lynn Solotaroff. Shown here is the jacket of the first English edition, published by Basic Books with a foreword by Jerome S. Bruner. Loretta Li’s design uses Benguiat Montage Extra Condensed and Copperplate Gothic Extended.

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The Fantastic Art of Frank Frazetta (August 1975). The small type (and the text typeface) is De Vinne.

West Nouveau Didot is a typeface drawn by Dave West and added to the catalog of Photo-Lettering by 1971.

In August 1975, it was used in all caps for The Fantastic Art of Frank Frazetta, an album with assorted works by the “Godfather of fantasy art”, with an introduction by Betty Ballantine and book design by Robert Blanchard. The book was published by Rufus Publications and Peacock Press, an imprint of Ballantine Books. Scribner’s issued a hardback edition in September 1975.

The typeface subsequently became the backbone of the typographic identity of Frank Frazetta (1928–2010). It was used for all five volumes of The Fantastic Art of Frank Frazetta, as well as calendars, catalogs, jigsaw puzzles, and other items featuring the iconic works by the Brooklyn-born artist.

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The Fantastic Art of Frank Frazetta. Book Two (1977). The secondary typeface is ITC Souvenir.

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The Fantastic Art of Frank Frazetta. Book Three (1978)

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The Fantastic Art of Frank Frazetta, Book Four (1980). Betty Ballantine’s name now is set in all-caps West Nouveau Didot, too.

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The Fantastic Art of Frank Frazetta, Book Five (1985)

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Assorted Frank Frazetta calendars from 1977 to 1982

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The Frank Frazetta Calendar 1977, designed by Robert Blanchard

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The Frank Frazetta Calendar 1978

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The Frank Frazetta Calendar 1979

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The Frank Frazetta Calendar 1980

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The Frank Frazetta Calendar 1982 with box

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The Fantastic Art of Frank Frazetta jigsaw puzzle, “The Death Dealer” (1973). The text in red caps is in ITC Korinna. The title uses another PLINC face, Staudel Xenotype P.

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A collection of 1970s and 1980s Frazetta puzzles from American Publishing Corporation

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The Fantastic Art of Frank Frazetta, Catalog No. 2 (1981)

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The Fantastic Art of Frank Frazetta, Catalog No. 2 (1991)

Kind of Blue is Miles Davis’ sixth album for Columbia Records, released in 1959.

The light grotesque seen here for the name of the artist and the album title is Dom Grotesk Condensed 3 – the former in all caps and the latter with enlarged caps. No designer is credited. The photography is by Jay Maisel.

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For the stereo release, the whole design was moved down.

Creating with Paint, 1967, with illustrations by Peter Landa

Can you bear more Caruso Roxy? Here’s another Use of it – it’ll be the last one from my side for a while, promised.

It’s my personal favorite: a series of creative activity books, authored by Grace Mintonye and James E. Seidelman and published by Crowell-Collier Press in New York from 1967 on. The titles pair all-caps Roxy with lowercase Barclay, and are embedded in gorgeous, topical jacket designs. The interiors – not shown here – are beautifully designed, too. If you’re into crafts and/or this mid-century aesthetic, make sure to browse your thrift store for a copy.

Creating Mosaics, 1967 (second printing from 1969), with illustrations by Harriet Sherman

Creating with Paper, 1967, with illustrations by Marjorie Borgos Blumenkopf

Creating with Clay, 1967 (second printing from 1970), with illustrations by Robert William Hinds

Creating with Wood, 1969, with illustrations by Lynn Sweat

Creating with Papiermache, 1971, with illustrations by Christine Randall. This title uses the Light weight of Roxy.

Shopping Cart Art, 1970, with illustrations by Kaye Sherry. This one was handled differently, probably because of the longer title: caps from Roxy Light are paired with lowercase letters from Gonzales El Royal. The “Creating” part was dropped as well.

Dust jacket of the hardback edition by Bartholomew House, 1969, with Helvetica caps for the credits

Capitalizing on the success of Coffee Tea or Me? (1967), Bartholomew House followed up with Tender Loving Care. The uninhibited memoirs of two air force nurses. This “adult fiction” is credited to Joni Moura and Jackie Sutherland, but again was ghost-written by Donald Bain. In terms of visuals, the publisher stuck to the formula for success with illustrations by Bill Wenzel and Caruso Roxy as the signature typeface.

The paperback edition by Fawcett Crest uses Alternate Gothic for the named of the alleged authors and Inserat-Grotesk for the blurb.

Benard Glemser’s novel about prospective stewardess Carol Thompson was originally published by Random House as Girl on a Wing in 1960, with a much classier cover. It 1963, it was made into a movie entitled Come Fly With Me and re-issued by Bantam as The Fly Girls. In 1969, Bantam brought out a new paperback edition with a sexist cover design that obviously jumped on the bandwagon of the top-selling Coffee Tea or Me from 1967.

I’m adding it here because of the cover typeface which hasn’t come up a lot on Fonts In Use before: West Roma is wider than Caruso Roxy, but has an overall similar feel. Drawn by Dave West in the second half of the 1960s, Photo-Lettering grouped it together with Roxy, Roxanna, Loose New Roman and Fantasia in a section named “Curled Casual Latins”.

Glemser and Bantam tried to squeeze even more out of the trend, and issued the sequel The Super-Jet Girls and a new edition of Here Come The Brides in 1971. Despite playing it safe with Caruso Roxy on the cover, these books weren’t as big a hit. What they did succeed in was further tainting Roxy as the stereotypical typeface for the lewd aspects of the Swinging Sixties.

First edition (hardcover) by Bartholomew House, 1967, illustrated by Bill Wenzell. The illustrations on the front of jacket are by Roy E. LaGrone. Secondary typefaces include Craw Clarendon Condensed, Filmotype Harmony (or Photo-Lettering’s copy, Almadine Script), and Century Expanded Italic.

Coffee Tea or Me? was advertised as “the uninhibited memoirs of two airline stewardesses”, and credited to Trudy Baker and Rachel Jones. In fact, it was ghost-written by Donald Bain. The 1967 hardcover dust jacket features Caruso Roxy, set in all caps. The same typeface was also used for the paperback cover, now bigger and in mixed case, as well as for the three sequels published until 1975. In 1973, the book was made into a film.

Caruso Roxy is a typeface that we’ve come to associate with the swinging 60s.

Coffee Tea or Me? The uninhibited memoirs of two airline stewardesses. First Bantam edition (paperback), November 1968 with cover art by Bill Wenzel and small text in all-caps News Gothic.

The Coffee Tea or Me Girls’ ’Round the World Diary. First edition (hardcover) by Grosset & Dunlap, 1970. The multilingual toasts are stereotypically added in more or less fitting typefaces: Peignot (French), Post-Antiqua (Hebrew), Cloister Black (German), Centaur (Spanish), Akzidenz-Grotesk Extended (Scandinavian), Jessen-Schrift (Greek), Americana (English), Mandarin (Japanese), and Century Schoolbook (Italian).

Jacket and cover with spine lettering

The Coffee Tea or Me Girls’ ’Round the World Diary. Paperback edition by Bantam Books, April 1971, with small type in Alternate Gothic.

The Coffee Tea Or Me Girls: Lay it On The Line, Bantam Books, 1973. The fat years are over: the main typeface now is Caruso Roxy’s light weight. Secondary text is in italic caps from Caledonia.

The Coffee Tea Or Me Girls Get Away From It All, Bantam Books, 1975, with Helvetica used for the text in red.

A rare sighting of Theodore Fantasia, for a book by “ghost hunter” Hans Holzer. Drawn by John Theodore, the italic all-caps typeface is a formidable choice for the topic: don’t the amorphous white letters look a lot like a bunch of kids haunting and hooting coltishly underneath bedsheets? Especially the E seems to have a lot of fun, whereas C looks unwell and wobbly, having overdosed on the Halloween candy.

First published in hardback by Hawthorn Books in 1968, this is the cover of the paperback edition by Popular Library.

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Not Caruso Roxy, but another quirky typeface with bounce and curls that was likewise introduced by Photo-Lettering in the 1960s: this is Chicamakomiko, drawn by Richard Rosenblum (and digitized by Susana Carvalho in 2011), in use on the paperback cover of a screwball blackmail novel from a time when the most pressing question seemingly was whether the US President was a weedhead. (In fact, things weren’t that peaceful back then either.)

Sonny Terry (1911–1986) was a blues musician from Greensboro, Georgia. Playing the harmonica, he formed a duo with Piedmont blues–style guitarist Blind Boy Fuller, and later with Brownie McGhee. Half of his 1963 album Sonny Is King features McGhee, the other one Lightnin’ Hopkins. It was released on Bluesville, a sublabel of Prestige Records.

For the cover, Don Schlitten (1932–2026) specified Caruso Roxy, with several alternate forms. Three years later, Schlitten would use the same typeface for an album by Phil Woods and Red Garland.

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Songs in Spanish for Children is a 1962 vinyl record released by Columbia Records. With Martita, Jesus De Jerez, and Juan Rojas as the singers, it’s comprised of various Spanish songs.

The main star of the show is Caruso Roxy, used entirely in lowercase, but with several alternate glyphs in their swashy glory. This typeface’s release coincides with the album’s.

The cover illustration is by John Peterson. No designer is credited.

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From Wikipedia:

Turning On is a collection of thirteen science fiction short stories by American writer Damon Knight. The stories were originally published between 1951 and 1965 in Galaxy, Analog and other science fiction magazines.

This is the first paperback edition, published as Ace G-677 in 1966, with cover art by Jack Gaughan and obliqued Caruso Roxy for the type.

While the blurb on the front cover uses two widths of News Gothic, the spine lettering is in it bolder sibling, Franklin Gothic.

Don Schlitten was born in 1932 in the Bronx and attended Music and Art High School in Harlem. In 1955, he started his career as jazz record producer by co-founding Signal. After that label was sold in the late 1950s, he worked at Prestige Records throughout the 1960s, serving both as art director and recording director. In this time, he was in charge of hundreds of record covers, often providing the design as well as the photography himself. Schlitten subsequently founded Cobblestone (with Joe Fields of Muse) in 1972 and Xanadu in 1975.

The shown cover is for an album by Phil Woods with Red Garland, released in 1965 on Status Records, a budget label launched by Prestige the year before. Schlitten was a frequent customer of Photo-Lettering. For this release, he opted for Caruso Roxy, a bold animated typeface with flared stems and curly terminals that was released a few years before.

Don Schlitten died February 9, 2026, in Kingsbridge, New York. Rest in peace.

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Caruso Roxy in yellow caps and with lots of its swirling glyphs for Organ in Orbit, a 1965 album by jazz space-age organist Julius Goldberg (1915–1977), better known as Sir Julian Gould, or just Sir Julian. The uncredited cover designer went with a very literal translation of the title. It seems likely that the sans used for the track names is from the PLINC library as well. With the top-heavy S, Pacella Electra is a contender.

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Victor Caruso’s Roxy was first shown in Photo-Lettering’s Art Nouveau Xenotypes 1895–1905 from 1962 under the moniker Xenotype 5017. Stylistically, it doesn’t evoke Art Nouveau (nor the Roaring Twenties), but really is a child of the 1960s, and a harbinger of the Swinging Sixties and Flower Power.

The cover of Toni Carroll’s second album from 1964 is the earliest use of Caruso Roxy documented on Fonts In Use so far. The uncredited designer specified a slanted setting – as seen in the last line of the specimen shown below. Note the two forms for s. Caruso Roxy offered numerous alternates: for frequent characters like n and i, there were a whopping six or even seven different forms, respectively.

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Spread with pages 854 and 855 from Art Nouveau Xenotypes 1895–1905. Xenotype 5017 a.k.a. Caruso Roxy (bottom right) is an outlier: the other faces are from the period mentioned in the title, or were at least around at the time: Flirt (c.1886), Thalia (1894), Gazelle (by 1893), Kismet (1879), and two adaptations of alphabets drawn by Peter Schnorr before 1905. The source of Xenotype 3532 is yet unidentified.

Detail