Paul Hemphill – The Nashville Sound: Bright Lights & Country Music album art

The first edition of The Nashville Sound: Bright Lights & Country Music by Paul Hemphill was published in 1970 by Simon & Schuster.

The book jacket shows a jukebox, with the first part of the title set in yellow caps arranged on a curve. The condensed face with concave stems probably goes back to an old metal typeface. It is shown in the Solotype catalog of film typefaces as Nottingham, which is not necessarily the original name. The same (or a very similar) style also appears as “F 259” in Headliners’ Morgan Press Collection, and as “Peril” in a Lettergraphics catalog. If you know more about its origins, please let us know in a comment. I am not aware of a digital version, but Erik Marinovich’s Hermanos is in the same ballpark.

The dotted letters used for the second part are from another rather obscure typeface: It is “Act 9” from Norton Vaudeville, a series of styles emulating marquee lettering, designed by S.E. Norton for Photo-Lettering, Inc sometime before 1950. Act 9 is the most basic member, consisting of solid dots. Contemporary fonts with a similar dotted look include Beretta Sans (Damien Gautier, 2011) and Sélavy (Nina Stössinger, 2013).

This cover design was referenced in the cover art for the accompanying 6 LP box set, albeit with different typefaces and imagery.