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Suits Me - The Double Life of Billy Tipton
Diane Wood Middlebrook - Suits Me - The Double Life of Billy Tipton
(Repost from Livejournal)
Billy Tipton was a minor Depression-era jazz musician who, among other things, organized the Billy Tipton Trio for the vaudeville circuit. However, he was born Dorothy Lucille Tipton and apparently decided to don the male costume in order to get a job as a saxophone player. He ended up living the rest of his life as a male.
(This entry could be easier to write in Finnish because we don't have gender-specific personal pronouns…)
In his first years, some of the fellow musicians knew what was going on but apparently considered that his costume was a sort-of-a-uniform for the bandstand. Or maybe Tipton was less proficient in hiding the female features. He later compensated by adopting a role of a short male with obvious lifts in his shoes, telling sexist and homophobic jokes, probably to over-emphasize the masculine image. The fear of exposure could have also lead to fear that larger fame could have brought along more scrutiny. So Tipton apparently gave up in the verge of success and became a booking agent.
All the three of Tipton's common-law wives the writer could contact said they didn't discover Tipton's birth gender before it became public in 1982 after Tipton's death. That includes the ex-stripper Kitty Oakes who lived with Tipton for 18 years, tried to discipline their three adopted sons and contacted Middlebrook to write the book.
Unfortunately everything in the book has been said after the exposure so the relative's words may be based of hindsight. Tipton left no memoirs, no explanations - or remnants of the male paraphernalia he had used during his life as a common-law husband and stepfather.
Middlebrook also tries to set up the background and extensively describes the era of Jazz, what it used to be in the Depression-ere Oklahoma, Prohibition and WW2-time Spokane, Washington. She admits that she can only speculate on Tipton's motivations. What passed as a contemporary equivalent to a LGBT scene was nonexistent or keeping very low profile at the time so he had very few friends that knew the secret.
(Repost from Livejournal)
Billy Tipton was a minor Depression-era jazz musician who, among other things, organized the Billy Tipton Trio for the vaudeville circuit. However, he was born Dorothy Lucille Tipton and apparently decided to don the male costume in order to get a job as a saxophone player. He ended up living the rest of his life as a male.
(This entry could be easier to write in Finnish because we don't have gender-specific personal pronouns…)
In his first years, some of the fellow musicians knew what was going on but apparently considered that his costume was a sort-of-a-uniform for the bandstand. Or maybe Tipton was less proficient in hiding the female features. He later compensated by adopting a role of a short male with obvious lifts in his shoes, telling sexist and homophobic jokes, probably to over-emphasize the masculine image. The fear of exposure could have also lead to fear that larger fame could have brought along more scrutiny. So Tipton apparently gave up in the verge of success and became a booking agent.
All the three of Tipton's common-law wives the writer could contact said they didn't discover Tipton's birth gender before it became public in 1982 after Tipton's death. That includes the ex-stripper Kitty Oakes who lived with Tipton for 18 years, tried to discipline their three adopted sons and contacted Middlebrook to write the book.
Unfortunately everything in the book has been said after the exposure so the relative's words may be based of hindsight. Tipton left no memoirs, no explanations - or remnants of the male paraphernalia he had used during his life as a common-law husband and stepfather.
Middlebrook also tries to set up the background and extensively describes the era of Jazz, what it used to be in the Depression-ere Oklahoma, Prohibition and WW2-time Spokane, Washington. She admits that she can only speculate on Tipton's motivations. What passed as a contemporary equivalent to a LGBT scene was nonexistent or keeping very low profile at the time so he had very few friends that knew the secret.