Early Life
William Ray Cyrus was born in Flatwoods, Kentucky to Ron Cyrus, a politician and former steelworker, and his wife, the former Ruth Ann Casto. Cyrus started singing at the age of four and his parents divorced the following year. His grandfather was a Pentecostal preacher. Growing up, he was surrounded by bluegrass and gospel music from his family. His right-handed father played guitar. Left-handed Cyrus tried to play his father's guitar, but could not. He attended Georgetown College on a baseball scholarship before changing it to music. He dropped out of Georgetown during his junior year, realized he wanted to become a musician after attending a Neil Diamond concert and set a 10-month goal to start a career. In the 1980s, he played at a bar known as Changes Bar owned by Jimmy Gettys as a band called Sly Dog, before signing a record contract with Mercury Nashville Records. Sly Dog was named after a one-eyed dog that Cyrus owned.
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“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
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