Les Baxter’s Piano, Chorus & Orchestra – Sensational! album art
An easy listening album made by the famous Les Baxter, an American composer and conductor (born March 14, 1922, Mexia, Texas – died January 15, 1996, Newport Beach, California) who wrote over 150 film soundtracks. Baxter is also known for “The Poor People of Paris”, a number-one hit in 1956.
The cover of this album from 1962 brings together a smorgasbord of typefaces. The reversed bold sans-serif caps used for the title at the top are from a yet unidentified typeface. Filmotype Fairbanks comes close, but is not a match.
The titles in the lower part are set in Akzidenz-Grotesk extra a.k.a. Standard Extrabold Condensed (“Autumn Leaves” and “I Concentrate On You”), a (custom?) stencil version of Venus Extrabold Condensed (“Exodus”), Onyx (“La Vie En Rose”), Graphique (“Calcutta”), Alternate Gothic (“Love Is A Many Splendored Thing”), Venus Bold Condensed (“Never On Sunday” and “It’s A Big Wide Wonderful World”), Bodoni Bold Italic (“Havah Nagilah”), Ultra Bodoni Italic (“All The Things You Are”), Microgramma Condensed (“I Could Have Danced All Night”), and Cheltenham (“Vereda Tropical”).
The wide sans serif used in all caps at the top left of the back cover is Akzidenz-Grotesk breit fett, while the geometric sans chosen for the credits is Futura (or one of its copies). The liner notes are set in Century Expanded, paired with News Gothic for the track list.
