I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You by Aretha Franklin

The cover of Aretha Franklin’s eleventh studio album from March 1967 — including “Respect” — represents an early use of the swash italic style of West Behemoth, designed by Dave West for Photo-Lettering. While the non-swash Behemoth Clarendon Italic 11 was shown already in Alphabet Thesaurus Vol. 2 from 1965, this swash variant appeared only in Vol. 3 (1971), as Behemoth Clarendon Italic Swash. It’s distinguished by swash forms for the capitals and several lowercase letters including d g h k l n r t v y. Unlike the swashless variant, it has no entry strokes and less pronounced exit strokes on a i m etc.

West Behemoth was revived by Martin Wenzel for the digital PLINC reincarnation. This version includes the italic, but unfortunately not the — apparently more popular — swash italic. Among digital fonts, Tutti Paffuti NF is probably the closest option. Nick Curtis based his interpretation on Stymie Black Italic, which seems to be an anonymous knockoff of West’s design that appeared in catalogs by Typeshop (1973) and Lettergraphics (1976, as Stymie Black Italic Flair).