Hugh Romney

Born in 1936, Hugh Romney was a contemporary and friend of Bob Dylan and Tiny Tim, and a jazz poet at one time managed by Lenny Bruce, who brought him to California in 1962 as the opening act for jazz pianist Thelonious Monk at Club Renaissance in Los Angeles, where he recorded the live album 'Third Stream Humour'. He organized early counter-cultural happenings, as well as a commune that evolved into the Hog Farm collective, named after a property they briefly looked after. The group were psychedelic associates of the Grateful Dead and The Merry Pranksters and provided light shows in Los Angeles for the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Cream and others. Romney's charisma made him a frequent onstage character at festivals and in 1969, while on the way home from the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair, he was given the nickname 'Wavy Gravy' by B.B. King at the Texas Pop Festival, which he subsequently took as his legal name. Gravy and the Hog Farm grew involved in charity work and activism in the 1970s and 1980s, opening Camp Winnarainbow in Northern California.