Herb Cohen - gone, but not forgotten

Posted by: Guido Fawkes on 26 April 2010

Herb died last month - he was a manager: most notably for the great late Frank Zappa. He also manage Tom Waits. Among the list of notable acts he promoted were Pete Seeger and Odetta, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, George Duke, Alice Cooper, Tim Buckley, Lenny Bruce and Linda Ronstadt.

Herb will always be best known as the manager of the Mothers of Invention from 1965, arranging their first club dates and securing their first record deal. Herb and Zappa went on to set up and jointly own the Straight, Bizarre, and DiscReet Records.

After 10 years, Zappa claimed Herb was profiteering. Herb claimed Frank had Zoot Allures to a rival record label. So they fell out.

Still that's quite a list of artists Tom brought to the attention of the world.
Posted on: 27 April 2010 by Nick Lees
I read somewhere that Herb was behind the non-appearance on CD of the rather wonderful (if deeply whacky) Straight catalogue.

Star Sailor and Blue Afternoon appeared briefly in 1991, but there have only been dreadful pirate versions of Farewell Aldebaran and Penrod and the Jeff Simmmons albums took ages. No sign whatever of the barmy GTOs album (weird girl group with Zappa, Little Feat, Davy Jones!).

Whatever, yet another part of that era gone. Sigh.