Herb Cohen

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Herb Cohen (b. New York, 1933) is a record company executive and businessman, best known as the manager of Frank Zappa and many other Los Angeles-based musicians in the 1960s and 1970s.

After a period in the army, he moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1950s, and started to put on concerts with folk singers such as Pete Seeger and Odetta. He also began running coffee bars and folk clubs, such as The Unicorn and Cosmo Alley, during the late 1950's and early 1960's.

He began acting as manager for many artists, his eventual roster including Screamin' Jay Hawkins, George Duke, Alice Cooper, Tom Waits, Tim Buckley, Lenny Bruce, Theodore Bikel, and Linda Ronstadt.

He is best known as the manager of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention from 1965, arranging their first club dates and, after encouraging record producer Tom Wilson to see them perform, securing their first record deal. He and Zappa went on to set up and jointly own the Straight, Bizarre, and DiscReet Records labels with Zappa. After a ten year association, he and Zappa parted company amid litigation in 1976.