Harry Dean Stanton spent early formative years in West Irvine in central Kentucky, a land explored by Daniel Boone, torn by the Civil War, long dependent on tobacco, textiles, and for a time oil, first carried to markets by flatboats and later by railroad. Sheridan "Shorty" Stanton was a North Carolinian who grew tobacco and operated a barbershop. The much younger Ersel Moberly married him at least in part to get away from her crowded household only to find herself soon in another with three strapping boys and later Shorty's two daughters from an earlier marriage. It would be too much, and she abandoned the family, leaving a nearly lifelong legacy of tension in her relationship with her oldest son, Harry Dean. However, he inherited from her and his father's family a love of music, expressed in his early years in a barbershop quartet that included his brothers. After a disastrous stint down in Shorty's native North Carolina, the family returned to Kentucky, this time to the city of Lexington, where Harry Dean would attend high school and after military service college. By that time, Ersel had left, and Shorty was barbering fulltime.