Born as Jerry Clifford Welch in 1948, the sixth of twelve children of a goat-herder from the desert of Arizona.. of Cherokee and Choctaw ancestry as well as Welsh and the ubiquitous Scots-Irish. Imagine a youngish Merlin who grew up among Red-skinned Cowboys; then give him the spirit of a wood-elf, a mind like the Library of Alexandria and the sense of humor of a five-year-old; then dress him up in the silk robes of a Tantric Buddha.. and you will begin to get a picture of his personal reality.