Donna Fargo – The Happiest Girl in The Whole U.S.A. album art
Cover for the debut album by Donna Fargo (b. 1945), released by Dot Records in 1972. The Happiest Girl in The Whole U.S.A. opens up with the song of the same name. Recorded by the Californian English teacher during a school break, it became a number one hit on the country charts, and reached number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart. The album also contains her follow-up single “Funny Face”, which became an even bigger hit.
The swashy italic is West Italiano. Originally drawn by Dave West in the late 1960s, it was added to the library of Photo-Lettering, Inc. (PLINC) sometime before 1971. In 2015, Steve Ross and Ken Barber digitized the face for (the now defunct) photolettering.com. Today it’s available from House Industries as Plinc Italiano, who describe it as a “silky semi-serif [that] combines ingredients from eighteenth-century engraved italics and nineteenth-century Italian Modern, softened by fine stroke endings and plump dolloped terminals.”
Detail: the lowercase letters of “Fargo” were aligned to the cap line, in order to allow tighter linespacing. The setting features several of Italiano’s swash caps. The song names were added in all-caps Helvetica Italic.
