Never pretend that vinyl has perfect sound reproduction. The bass on the master has to be reduced by a lot to keep the groove size reasonable to fit more music on the record (hey, isn't that compressing the music to fit more on the medium?) and the high frequencies have to be amplified to get them above the noise floor of the vinyl. Then this has to be undone in a pre-amp or the LP input of the integrated amp. Unless you had a real audiophile pre-amp, you probably only ever heard an approximation of the RIAA curve on your equipment.
I read one article (sorry long since lost the reference) early in the CD/LP battle where one test the reviewers did was with a CD run through an LP master RIAA filter and then undid it with a typical amp's inverse filter. The LP lovers loved it because it gave some boosts right in the ranges they were used to. But don't pretend that just tossing in ±20 dB changes in the recording result in perfect audio - it can't.
I grew up with cassettes (didn't have my own record player and didn't dare use the living room one when my parents were home), so the cassette to CD step was an easy one other than early portability.
Unless you had a real audiophile pre-amp, you probably only ever heard an approximation of the RIAA curve on your equipment. You don't have to spend megabucks on a phono stage to get a good result, the filters aren't that complicated, but some effort is of course necessary. I wouldn't call it compression, either, it's 'equalization' - and with all the other issues involved with the mechanical-to-electrical conversion the adherence to the RIAA curve is a rather minor point. Not sure what that graphic represents exactly, but it certainly looks well below the standard even mainstream integrated amps achieved in the '80s.