Black Letter came up here on Fonts In Use before: Loring Eutemey picked it in 1964 for the cover of an album by Bent Fabric. Two years earlier, he already used it for Fathead Comes On by Dave Newman (1933–2009).

Armin Haab’s variation of Futura Black didn’t exist as a font for phototypesetting or dry transfer lettering. It’s rather an alphabet distributed in the form of a book: it was reproduced in Lettera 2 from 1961. Compared to Paul Renner’s 1929 design, it’s distinguished by boxier rounds in CDO etc. and pointed forms for AMVW, among other things.

The cover photography is by Lee Friedlander.

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Liner notes by Mort Fega

Gene Russell (December 2, 1932 – May 5, 1981) was an American pop, jazz, and soul keyboardist and the founder of the 1970s Oakland-based label Black Jazz Records. Born in Los Angeles, he began studying piano at a young age and later attended Juilliard. Throughout his career, Russell performed and recorded with several jazz artists, including Miles Davis, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Zoot Sims, William (Bill) Hillman, Dexter Gordon, and others. He also composed music for film and television and worked as an actor. Russell released two hard bop albums in 1967, and his third album, New Direction (1971), was the first release on his Black Jazz Records label. Photography for this cover is by Dorothy Tanous with the cover and packaging design by Ray Lawrence.

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Light's Out! is a jazz album by the Jackie McLean Quartet, with help from Donald Byrd and Elmo Hope, and was released in 1956 by Prestige Records.

Haymaker Cartoon is used for the main title, with supporting roles from Filmotype Homer and what looks like a somewhat squeezed Filmotype Hemlock or similar with a few alternates. The condensed casual sans is unknown [edit: it’s Hand Lettering 3920 or a version of this design, see comments]. In general, despite the album art’s use of Haymaker Cartoon, the design isn't as “out of place” as Gil Mellé's Miles Davis cover from the same year.

The back cover is much simpler, pairing Tempo with the similar Vogue.

No designer credited. The cover photography is by Esmond Edwards (1927–2007).

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Got My Mojo Workin’ is a 1966 album by jazz musician Jimmy Smith (1928–2005), released in 1965 by Verve Records/MGM Records. For the album cover, designer Michael Malatak used a photograph by Fred Seligo and typography in ATF’s Othello. The image shows a late 1970s French pressing.

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The legendary jazz pianist’s 1968 concert at Palo Alto High School, recorded by a janitor and shelved for decades, captures some of the fiercest, most spirited versions of his quartet’s core repertoire. The design reflects the raw, unfiltered energy of the live performance, encapsulating both the spontaneity and brilliance of Monk’s playing.

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From Blue Note:

John Patton, often known as Big John Patton, was one of Blue Note’s busiest soul-jazz organists during the golden age of the Hammond B-3s. Between 1963 and 1970 Patton cooked up 11 albums’ worth of material as a leader and sat in with a dizzying procession of skilled improvisers, and his best work has since been compared with that of tragically short-lived innovator Larry Young. Patton also enjoyed a long overdue comeback during the ’90s when he collaborated with saxophonist and composer John Zorn.

The cover of his album Accent on the Blues from 1969 was designed by Bob Venosa. He made early use of Papirtis Pink Mouse, and specifically its contoured “C” style, in all-lowercase letters.

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The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra is the first Sun Ra album to be recorded after he and the core of his Arkestra left Chicago and relocated to New York City. Recorded on October 10, 1961, it was originally released in 1962 by Savoy Records. This is the cover of a 1969 pressing on the French BYG label.

Designer Pierre Bompar used Bookman Swash Bold Italic, set on a circle to add a halo (or sunrise) to the back of Sun Ra’s head on the photograph by Chuck Stewart. The swash O is a glyph that’s not included in the versions by VGC, Mecanorma, or Letraset.

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In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Valie Export produced two records in Berlin-Kreuzberg together with the artist Ingrid Wiener: the LP Wahre Freundschaft (“True Friendship”) and the single “Bananen” (“Bananas”).

Another record has now been created in connection with her exhibition project at Kunsthaus Bregenz (KUB): Valie Export developed an impressive “sound sculpture” made of organ pipes and a song by Charles Mingus for the ground floor of the KUB. The sound of the organ pipes and the version of Mingus’ “Oh Lord, Don't Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb on Me” (1962), newly arranged by jazz pianist Peter Madsen and recorded under his direction, form the heart of the record. The song is both a prayer and a howl, a mixture of fear and accusation. The accompanying vinyl booklet contains photographs that document the musical creation process and the installation in the exhibition space. An extensive conversation between the artist and KUB director Thomas D. Trummer sheds light on the work newly created for the KUB.

Design by Fabian Bremer

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This self-titled double LP merges two previous compilations, Miles Davis Volume 1 (BLP 1501) and Miles Davis Volume 2 (BLP 1502), with music recorded between 1952 and 1954. Released in 1971 by United Artists Records, the deluxe set comes in a gatefold cover. A four-page booklet is fixed to the center, featuring liner notes by Colman Andrews.

Designer Bob Cato used ITC Avant Garde Gothic throughout, including giant caps from the Light weight for “MILES DAVIS”, with the oblique alternates for M A and V. The iconic geometric sans by Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase was made available just a year before, as one of ITC’s first releases.

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The numeral 1 here has a long diagonal nose – unlike in the specimens for ITC Avant Garde Gothic that I have seen.

Front and back cover

Source: www.hhv.de License: All Rights Reserved.

Roy Haynes is an American jazz drummer born in 1925 and active since 1942. His Cymbalism album was recorded in 1963 for New Jazz, a sublabel of Prestige Records.

For the cover typography, Don Schlitten (b. 1932) worked with Benguiat Interlock. Announced in 1959, this design by Ed Benguiat was Photo-Lettering’s first interlocking release, and, maybe together with Filmotype’s series, probably one of the earliest fontifications of such a lettering style.

Source: archive.org Internet Archive. License: All Rights Reserved.

Print ad announcing Benguiat Interlock and Opus, “two new designs created by Ed Benguiat”, in Art Direction, Vol. 11, No. 3, June 1959

Without having access to a complete glyph set, it’s difficult to say to what extent the letterforms seen on the album cover come directly from PLINC’s film negative, and to what extent they were touched up. As the name implies, Photo-Lettering’s process was a hybrid one: the settings were based on prefabricated (i.e. typographic) letterforms stored on photographic film, but could be modified and elaborated on by one of their lettering artists on staff. What’s certain is that Benguiat drew a boatload of alternates to allow for a hand-rendered look with nicely interlocking pairs. The partial glyph set reproduced in Alphabet Thesaurus Vol. 2 includes a staggering sixteen different forms for the letter A, eleven for E, eight for S, seven for R, and still five for Y.

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Source: www.hhv.de License: All Rights Reserved.

The liner notes by Vin Haynes on the back cover are set in Spartan. This Futura copy is distinguished by its alternate double-story a that was used here.

Hi Voltage is a 1968 album from American tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley (1930–1986), released on the Blue Note label.

The striking cover design is by Reid Miles, who set the album title and artist name in the bold weight of City on both the front and back cover. Cover photo by Francis Wolff.

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The back cover including Leonard Feather’s liner notes are set in Helvetica.

Herbie Mann at the Village Gate is a 1961 live album by jazz flutist Herbie Mann. Recorded at The Village Gate in Greenwich Village, New York, on November 17, 1961, Atlantic Records released the album in April 1962. Cover design by Martin Norman of Bob Slutzky Graphics, with an illustration by Turkish artist Abidin Dino (1913–1993) and Anzeigen-Grotesk in alternating word colors.

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Speak Low is a reissue of a hard bop/cool jazz album by Bill Evans, recorded September 18 and 27, 1956 in New York City and originally released as New Jazz Conceptions in 1957. This pressing by Riverside Records from New York was distributed in the UK (1967?) and Germany (1969), with a cover designed by German graphic artist Peter Penner.

I like how all the type is relegated to the edge of the cover, in a relatively small size – a solution that nicely corresponds to the title. The chosen typeface isn’t faint at all, though. First cast around 1892, Kalligraphia was reproduced in Ludwig Petzendorfer’s Schriftenatlas, Neue Folge (1903–1905), and rediscovered in the mid 1960s.

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The track list, credits, and Alun Morgan’s liner notes are set in Akzidenz-Grotesk.

Released in 1963, Thelonious Monk's first album for Columbia Records features all-caps Jessen-Schrift for the artist's name and album title and Palatino for the tracklist. On the back cover, liner notes and tracklist are written in Optima.

While the album art designer is unknown, the photo used was taken by Columbia photographer Don Hunstein.

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Chwast Art Tone in relatively early use for the cover of Soul Food by jazz pianist Bobby Timmons (1935–1974).

Don Schlitten’s design packages the soul jazz in a can, making a tongue-in-cheek reference to “canned music”, a derogatory term for pre-recorded (as opposed to live-performed) music. Art Tone’s bottom-heavy letterforms are shown with some perspective distortion, to match three-dimensional illustration. Such “circoflair techniques”, as Photo-Lettering, Inc. liked to call them, had become possible with phototype, and were realized with optical lenses. The specific variant is listed as “Dip Plumb Curve” in their Alphabet Thesaurus, Vol. 2 from 1965.

Seymour Chwast developed this peculiar typeface from a single letter a drawn for Artone Ink at Push Pin Studios in 1964. According to Steven Heller’s Design Literacy it was expanded into a full alphabet for the client and released by Photo-Lettering in the same year. It’s not yet shown in their 1965 catalog, though.

The album was recorded on September 30 and October 14, 1966 [Wikipedia] and comes with liner notes by Peter Drew dated Dec. 1966. Most sources state that the album was released still in the same year.

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Two of Photo-Lettering’s “Circoflair” techniques, the “Dip Fan Curve” and the “Dip Plumb Curve”, as shown in the Alphabet Thesaurus, Vol. 2, 1965. See the full spread with more options in Nick Sherman’s Flickr photostream.

The back cover shows the title and the artist’s name in undistorted Art Tone, with track listing and liner notes set in News Gothic.

Source: www.hifido.co.jp Photo: hifido. License: All Rights Reserved.

Front cover.

Tones for Joan’s Bones is the debut solo album by jazz pianist Chick Corea, who previously was a member of Miles Davis’s band. It was recorded in late 1966, but not released before April 1968 by Atlantic Records on their then new sublabel Vortex.

The cover was designed by Haig Adishian, featuring a powerful illustration by Dick Luppi that depicts the musician’s face in semi-profile, entangled in a multicolored floral pattern. The title is shown in amorphous capitals with a contour, set on a curve. They are taken from one of the variants of Photo-Lettering’s Staudel Xenotype J. First shown in Art Nouveau Xenotypes 1895–1905 from 1962 as Xenotype 3481, the caps of the solid basic style are virtually identical to Roberta III by Facsimile Fonts. I haven’t yet found out which of the two came first. Chances are they both go back to a historical source. Photo-Lettering had a number of other Staudels, some of which were more or less directly based on alphabets by Chicago-based lettering artist J.M. Bergling, see Staudel Xenotype K and Staudel Xenotype N.

Photo: Florian Hardwig. License: CC BY-NC-SA.

The contoured variants of Staudel Xenotype, as shown in Photo-Lettering’s Alphabet Thesaurus Vol. 3 from 1971. The style that’s listed here as Staudle [sic] Contour H-V is shown in the One Line Manual of Styles (also from 1971) as Staudel Contour V. Staudel (or Staudle) Gemutlich is filled with a decorative pattern. It comes in two variants; A (horizontally striped top half, solid bottom half) and B (reversed).

According to a 2006 interview, it was in 1968 – when this album was released – that Corea “came into contact with L. Ron Hubbard’s material in 1968 with Dianetics”. Since the early 1970s, he’s been an active Scientology member (and even recorded music composed by the cult’s founder to promote one of his book) – a fact that tainted his perception as artist. Chick Corea died on February 9, 2021, at age 79.

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Source: www.hifido.co.jp Photo: hifido. License: All Rights Reserved.

Back cover with liner notes by Nat Hentoff. The title here is set in the much soberer News Gothic Bold.

Setting the Pace is an album by saxophonists Dexter Gordon and Booker Ervin. It was recorded in Munich in 1965 and released by Prestige Records in 1967.

The tightly packed biform face appears to be Bailey Bold. A showing in the Letter-Fan (1969) suggests as much, except for the fact that Bailey is presented without any capital forms other than one alternate G. The capital/biform glyphs used here, for B D J K R V X, are neither included in Bailey Bold nor in California Caps, which was suggested by Lettergraphics as a matching uppercase companion.

[Edit: This isn’t Bailey, but Pacella Graphic Biform, drawn by Vincent Pacella for Photo-Lettering in or before 1965. See my comment to the post about Miles Davis – Greatest Hits.]

Don Schlitten did not only produce the album, he also takes credit for the photography and the design.

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The cover for Prestige’s album with greatest hits by Miles Davis appears to use Bailey for the title. Most letterforms match a showing of Bailey Bold Condensed in a Lettergraphics specimen from 1969. Differences include the flatter i dot and the t with a slightly shorter ascender, which would be easy customizations. The specimen presents four alternates: a and s with diagonal and rounded middle parts, t with a tail that ends at the baseline, and a G of capital form as seen here. Bailey didn’t have a proper uppercase. The D, R, and H and the wide v/V could either be additional biform alternates not shown in the specimen, or modifications. Or was there another, virtually identical face with more glyphs by a different manufacturer?

[Edit: Yes, there was. This isn’t Bailey, but Pacella Graphic Biform, see the comments.]

The album was produced and designed by Don Schlitten, with photography by Ray Avery. See also another album cover by Schlitten from the same year, for which he used a narrower style from the same typeface.

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Pressing by Victor Record Company, Japan (SMJX-10020), with a different order for the tracks.

ITC Benguiat Gothic in use for the personnel of Focus, an album by American jazz trumpeter Bill Hardman (1933–1990). The typeface choice for the title is a case of visual onomatopoeia: It’s Process, a set of out-of-focus grotesque caps.

Recorded in 1980, the album was released only in 1984 by Academy of Fine Arts Katowice. Art direction by W. Dale Cramer, with photography by Hugh Bell.

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