J. Clyde Barcus was born December 27, 1889 in Huntington, Cable County, West Virginia. He attended Pikesville Collegiate Institute in Kentucky, where he studied for a degree in mining engineering. His studies were temporarily suspended, however, when Clyde followed his father Clyde Sr., who operated a coal mine at the time, to Goldfield, Nevada after the gold rush of 1906. Their hoped-for mine never came to be, and Clyde Sr.

Keith Austin was born in Santa Barbara, California on May 11, 1944. He moved to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1947 to live with his grandparents on the Rocking Horse Ranch. At the age of 13, he fell in love with rock n' roll after attending Elvis Presley's press conference at the Frontier Hotel.