Adelaide Gail Zappa (née Sloatman; January 1, 1945 – October 7, 2015) was the wife of musician and composer Frank Zappa and the trustee of the Zappa Family Trust. They met in Los Angeles in 1966 and married while she was pregnant with their first child, Moon, followed by Dweezil, Ahmet and Diva.

In 2002, Zappa founded the Zappa Family Trust, a holder for the title and copyright to Frank Zappa's musical and artistic products, as well as his commercial image. In 2015, the Trust was given to her son Ahmet shortly before she died of lung cancer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gail_Zappa

Gail Zappa (born Adelaide Gail Sloatman) was the second wife of the late musician and composer Frank Zappa and is the executor of the Zappa Family Trust. They met in 1966 when she was working at the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles, and they were married on September 21, 1967, while she was pregnant with her first child, Moon Zappa. The marriage also produced children Dweezil Zappa, Ahmet Zappa, and Diva Zappa. She is an aunt to model/actress Lala Sloatman.

Gail made a very brief appearance with musician boyfriend Bobby Jameson in the 1967 documentary film Mondo Hollywood. The scene was filmed in 1965 or 1966 before she met Frank.

Since Frank Zappa's death in 1993, she has overseen the release of his recordings, including multiple previously unavailable works, under the Zappa Family Trust. The Trust holds title and copyright to Frank Zappa's musical and artistic products, as well as his commercial image. In this capacity, she often sends cease and desist letters to venues hosting bands playing the music of and paying tribute to her late husband based upon use of the trademarked brand "Zappa" in advertising the content of a given concert. Although no U.S. lawsuits have been filed, one such band was forced to cancel a show during their 2008 tour due to pressure from the Zappa Family Trust.

In 2008, the Zappa Family Trust sued the organizers of the Zappanale Festival, held just outside of Bad Doberan, Germany, demanding that they change the name of the festival, remove their promotional posters (which contained an allegedly trademarked moustache similar to Frank Zappa's) and remove the statue of him that has stood in the city center since the 1990s. In January 2009 the court found in Zappanale's favor after their defense argued that since the Zappa Family Trust only sells products on the Internet and accepts only U.S. dollars they had not effectively exercised their trademarks in Germany for over five years. Similarly, the use of the moustache was sufficiently different in Zappanale's merchandise so as not to cause confusion between the two.

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/rock/6722011/gail-zappa-f...

• Reference: Biographical Summaries of Notable People - SmartCopy: Jun 4 2020, 18:46:52 UTC

Born Adelaide Gail Sloatman, she was the widow of musician and composer Frank Zappa. The daughter of a nuclear weapons research physicist with the U.S. Navy, she lived with her family in London as a teenager and got a job as a secretary for the Office of Naval Research and Development rather than attend college. She met Doors frontman Jim Morrison at a very young age, in kindergarten, since they both had high-ranking naval officials for fathers. In the mid-1960s, she moved to New York where she attended the Fashion Institute of Technology and immersed herself in the music scene before hitchhiking to Los Angeles where she met and befriended future Runaways manager Kim Fowley, and recorded an album with him billed as 'Bunny and Bear'. In 1967, she made a very brief appearance in the documentary film 'Mondo Hollywood'. She met Frank Zappa when she was a secretary at the Sunset Strip mainstay, the Whisky-a-Go-Go, and the couple married on September 21, 1967, while she was pregnant with her first child, Moon. The couple would go on to have three more children; Dweezil, Ahmet and Diva Zappa. After Frank's death in 1993, she set up the Zappa Family Trust and issued 38 albums between 1994 and 2015 of previously unreleased music that Frank had recorded. This year's 'Dance Me This' was billed as his final album and is significant for being his 100th record. Gail had reportedly been suffering from lung cancer.

• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Apr 7 2024, 19:52:51 UTC