Lee Perry – Roast Fish Collie Weed & Corn Bread album art
Arguably one of the best (known) Lee Perry albums. Unusual and unexpected turns and sound effects – the sound of blowing smoke into a mic, a crying baby, bellowing cows, etc. – meander through songs that are held together by a strong, laidback groove.
The typography (as is often the case with reggae) is not quite on the same level as the music, but the eclectic type selection of designer Ricky Ricketts certainly matches Perry’s wild production. The seemingly random combinations pair popular 1970s type like ITC Serif Gothic (front) and the futuristic ITC Bauhaus (back cover) with a more obscure choice: a sample of Berthold’s Herkules somehow found its way from Germany, 1899, to Jamaica, 1978.
The sans serifs on the cover seem to be Lightline Gothic (another oldie from ATF, 1908) and Univers. Note the brackets and single quotes that seem to be taken from another typeface. Gill Sans is used for the credits on the back cover. The portrait drawing on the cover is signed “Witter Dread’ in the lower right corner.
2 Comments on “Lee Perry – Roast Fish Collie Weed & Corn Bread album art”
I think I found the missing link: Face Photosetting in London adopted the face in the early 1970s. It was added to the library of German typesetting service Fürst in 1973, who named it Herkules ’73 to distinguish it from their existing Herkules (i.e. Filmotype Hercules). It’s also listed in the E1 catalog (1974) by Berthold Fototypes, who had yet another Herkules. This info has now been added to the typeface page.
Ah, that seems to be the link, indeed. Another possibility would be that the letters were reproduced via photos of the type in a catalog, but – assuming the designers had a page at hand with all the capitals at a large size – this indirect way of typesetting would certainly have been visible in the sharpness of the letters on the cover.