Buffalo Springfield – Retrospective. The Best of Buffalo Springfield album art
Retrospective is a compilation album with “the best of Buffalo Springfield”, issued by ATCO Records in February 1969. The group from Los Angeles disbanded several months earlier, and the members including Neil Young, Bruce Palmer, Dewey Martin, Stephen Stills and Richie Furay went on to pursue other projects.
The photomontage is by local artist Eve Babitz (1943–2021). Haig Adishian took care of the layout and typography. The bold and bottom-heavy display typeface with the bulbous terminals is Davison Jumbo. Drawn by Dave Davison, it was mentioned in Photo-Lettering’s 1969 Alphabet Yearbook, and hence was brand new at the time of the album’s release. In a 1971 catalog, it’s shown in seven variants; A (open), B (solid, shown), C (open with gradient stripe fill), D–F (like A–C, but with Southeast split shade), and G (solid with gradient stripe fill). The style used here is Jumbo E, used with different colors for the letters and the shadows.
The album opens with “For What It’s Worth” (listen to it on YouTube). Buffalo Springfield’s greatest hit was covered, sampled and referenced numerous times, probably most prominently for Public Enemy’s “He Got Game” from 1998.
