Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton
Diana Wood Middlebrook
Billy Tipton was an American Jazz pianist and band leader but in fact he was born Dorothy Tipton, and almost nobody knew the truth until the day he died in 1989. Over a fifty-year performing career, Billy Tipton fooled nearly everyone, including Duke Ellington and Norma Teagarden, five successive "wives" with whom Billy lived as a man, and three children who he "fathered."
What is fascinating is that Billy never underwent any kind of surgery or anything like that, never took drugs or hormones - 'she' just dressed as a man, bound her breasts ... told 'wives' that he had sustained severe injuries in an accident to explain the bandages. None of them ever saw him naked, or take a bath or anything like that .. but unbelievably claim to have had a normal sex life with 'him' - always in the dark of course.
The children were all adopted, but they all grew up believing their dad was their dad. It was literally only when Billy died .. that the truth was discovered.
It really is the most fascinating book - and tells how Dorothy (a good looking young woman by the way) first started dressing as a man to get work as a band musician. She was born in 1914 and in the late 20s and 30s it wasn't easy for a girl to get work in a very male dominated business. But why she carried on .. and indeed went on to live her entire life as a man, keeping it secret from everyone ... is what makes the book so fascinating. Billy even had some TV success and recorded albums .. and no-one knew.
Billy Tipton's real life story 'inspired' the novel Trumpet by Jackie Kay which is on the English educational syllabus (I know we did it when I did my English degree). I'll choose my words carefully but I would say it was a bit more than 'inspired' by it. The similarities between the real life story and the fictionalised account (of the life of Scottish jazz trumpeter Joss Moody whose death revealed that he was, in fact, a woman ... told through the voices of Moody's wife, his adopted son and a freelance journalist) are quite remarkable. Uncanny in fact .... and that's all I'm saying.
But I would recommend the biography of Billy over the novel any day. It is a better read for starters, and of course the fact that it's absolutely true and the author interviews all of those who knew him - sons, ex 'wives', fellow musicians, other family members, and there are lots of pics ... it really is a remarkable story.