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.

Whoa, Nelly! (DreamWorks Records, 2000)

The Canadian pop star Nelly Furtado used a logo that appears to be based on the caps of Caruso Roxy [edit: or possibly on Action Is, a digital font indirectly based on it, see comments]. It can be seen in her first four albums, from 2000 to 2009. “I’m Like A Bird,” the lead single from her first album, won a Grammy in 2002 for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.

Graphic design by noted Los Angeles album designer Kevin Reagan.

“I’m Like A Bird” UK single cover (2000)

“I’m Like A Bird” single cover (variant, 2000)

Folklore (DreamWorks Records, 2003). The title is in a grunged Shelley Script.

Loose (Geffen Records and Mosley Music Group, 2006)

Mi Plan (Nelstar Entertainment, 2009)

Promo sticker

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.

US Style B poster (39″×59″), with credits in News Gothic Extra Condensed or similar.

From Wikipedia:

Sweet Charity is a 1969 American musical comedy-drama film, directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse. It was adapted by Peter Stone from the 1966 stage musical—also directed and choreographed by Fosse— in turn based on the 1957 film Nights of Cabiria.

It stars Shirley MacLaine in the title role, a taxi dancer at a Times Square dance hall. The cast also features John McMartin, Chita Rivera, Paula Kelly, Stubby Kaye, Ricardo Montalbán, and Sammy Davis Jr.

In terms of typography, the movie posters follow the lead of the musical, see for example the album cover from 1966, and prominently feature a slanted Caruso Roxy.

The primary text on this Belgian poster (14″×21.5″) doesn’t make direct use of Roxy. It’s rather lettering based on Victor Caruso’s typeface. The small print in blue uses Univers Condensed.

News Gothic and Caruso Roxy for the album release of Sweet Charity, a musical comedy starring Gwen Verdon (1925–2000), by Columbia Masterworks.

No designer credited. The photograph is by Friedman-Abeles and was also used on the poster for the stage production at Detroit’s Fisher Theatre.

[More info on Discogs]

Man of La Mancha is a 1965 musical adaptation of Don Quixote, with a book by Dale Wasserman, lyrics by Joe Darion, and music by Mitch Leigh. The libretto was published by Random House in 1966, featuring an illustratin by Al Hirschfeld and Caruso Roxy for the title. Its amorphous glyphs allowed the jacket designer to knead the words into place, squeezing the second M down to x-height so that the two lines fit snug together.

Detail from the inner flap of the book jacket, with credits in Bodoni

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.

[More info on Discogs]

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.

[More info on Discogs]

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.

[More info on Discogs]

Source: www.last.fm License: All Rights Reserved.

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.

[More info on Discogs]

This album with interpretations of romantic music by Vilnius-born violinst Jascha Heifetz (1901–1987) was released by RCA Red Seal in 1971. It features the light weight of Caruso Roxy, in all caps and with white dots on the I’s.

“The violinist of the century” is set in a wide style from the Sacramento series, in contoured caps. The names of the tracks are in some Helvetica-like substance with a non-standard a. Since the other two fonts are Photo-Lettering exclusives, it stands to reason that their phototype adaptation included such an alternate.

The illustration is by Al Hirschfeld (1903–2003) who is known for hiding the name of his daughter, Nina, in most of the drawings he produced after her birth. Zoom in to spot it.

[More info on Discogs]

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.

[More info on Discogs]

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

Source: www.ebay.co.uk antondischi (edited). License: All Rights Reserved.

Front cover, Decca version

Paris for Lovers is an album by French accordionist Maurice Larcange (1929–2007), released in the Phase 4 Stereo series by London Records in the United States and by Decca Records in the United Kingdom. For the cover, New York-based studio Farmlett, Barsanti & Associates filled the big numeral 4 with a smorgasbord of local stereotypes; from the tricolore and a pastiche of Toulouse-Lautrec’s Jane Avril poster to a bottle of Dubonnet and the inevitable Eiffel Tower.

Judging from details like the short and narrow i and the v with ascending swash, the title typeface is Photo-Lettering’s Caruso Roxy (1962) – and not its close follower Holiday: in the Lettergraphics face, the i is taller and wider and there’s no alternate form for v, see this glyph set.

[More info on Discogs]

Source: www.ebay.co.uk Craig Moerer Records By Mail. License: All Rights Reserved.

Front cover, London Records version

Source: www.ebay.co.uk Craig Moerer Records By Mail. License: All Rights Reserved.

Back cover, London Records version

Source: www.todocoleccion.net pilarc-alvarez. License: All Rights Reserved.

Cassette version, 1973

Good Taste Is Timeless is the fifth studio album by the Holy Modal Rounders, a psychedelic folk band formed in 1963 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. It was released in 1971, three years after The Moray Eels Eat The Holy Modal Rounders. The cover art is by Michael Hurley (1941–2025) who also collaborated with the band musically, and wrote the sixth track on the album, “Love Is the Closest Thing”. The band name is in caps from Caruso Roxy Light.

[More info on Discogs]

Filmotype Mason is used for the song names on the back cover. The liner photo is by Robert Comerford.

This recording of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D major by the London Symphony Orchestra under conductor Jascha Horenstein was made September 29–30, 1969, at Barking Assembly Hall, London.

The cover for the 1970 release on Nonesuch Records was designed by Robert L. Heimall, with art by Bob Pepper and art direction by William S. Harvey. It features a substantial amount of text set in Victor Caruso’s Roxy (Photo-Lettering, 1962).

This allows us to compare it to Holiday, which is a close follower shown by Lettergraphics in 1966. Assuming the glyph set for Holiday as found in a Typeshop catalog is faithful and complete, and that none of Roxy’s letterforms on the album cover were customized, differences in Holiday can be found in M (swash to the right), terminals in h, l etc. (flat instead of concave), 1 (flat instead of angled top), i (taller and wider*), j (terminal curls less), t (stem curves more*), H (right stem is longer), etc.

*) Caruso Roxy has alternates that match the form in Holiday.

[More info on Discogs]

Detail

Caruso Roxy’s bold weight (1962) can be seen in use on the cover of Feelin’ Good, a 1965 album by Lena Horne (1917–2010). Arranged by Ray Ellis, it was Horne’s first release with United Artists Records. The song names – likewise arranged on curved baselines – appear to be in all caps from Microflair Condensed, another 1960s face by Photo-Lettering. By 1966, Caruso Roxy was copied by Lettergraphics as Holiday.

[More info on Discogs]

The text on the balloon (“HAPPY BIRTHD”) might be in all-caps Franklin Gothic Wide.

This box set with twelve 7″ records containing a total of fifty party playtime songs was released on Playhour, a sublabel of Pickwick Records, and advertised in 1970. The collage on the cover is by Frank Daniel. The three main display typefaces are all from the catalog of Photo-Lettering: “50” uses numerals from West Barnum, “Party Playtime” is in caps from Caruso Roxy, and the Playhour logo on the back, the inner sleeve and the labels features Gonzales Jeanette.

[More info on Discogs]