The Immortal Otis Redding

Atco SD 33-252. Cover design by Loring Eutemey, with photography by Edward Azlant.

This post is a sequel to Garrison’s contribution about the French series of singles, titled The Otis Redding Story.

The Immortal Otis Redding was released in June 1968 by Atco Records, compiling eleven songs recorded by Redding in a three-week stretch of sessions that concluded days prior to his death in December 1967.

The cover was designed by Loring Eutemey, using a variant of Milton Glaser’s Baby Teeth. Unlike the lettering on the French singles, the details including the counter placement match “Glaser Baby Teeth Open C” as shown in PLINC’s Alphabet Thesaurus Vol. 3 from 1971. The colored stripes are the only modification. It’s not clear when Baby Teeth was first made available to others. Glaser himself used it as early as 1966, but so far, the earliest in-use example designed by others in our collection dates from 1973. Like Glaser, Eutemey was a Cooper Union graduate and began his career at Push Pin Studios. This makes it seem likely that he had early access to it.

My hunch is that Eutemey’s cover was the inspiration for the use of (self-made) Baby Teeth on the French single sleeves. Some sources claim that the first volumes of The Otis Redding Story were released in 1967, and hence predate The Immortal Otis Redding. I believe the 1967 date is incorrect: Redding died on December 10, 1967, and it seems implausible that Stax/Atco France launched their memorial series in the same year.

Later release by Atlantic Records (ATC 9118).

The Immortal Otis Redding was released in France under the title Amen as Atco 3011 in 1968 [Discogs]. Photo by Jean-Pierre Leloir. The image shows a later reissue (40292) with the same cover design. The artist’s name uses the same lettering emulating Baby Teeth that can be seen on the series of singles.