Suits Me: The Double Life Of Billy Tipton by Diane Wood Middlebrook

Suits Me: The Double Life Of Billy Tipton

Diane Wood Middlebrook

Suits Me is the biography of a now notorious jazz musician named Billy Tipton, who grew up as Dorothy Tipton in Oklahoma City and Kansas City but lived as a man from the time she was nineteen until she died at age seventy-four. Billy Tipton’s death in Spokane, Washington, made news all over the world, not because he was celebrated as a musician but because the scale of his deception – he had been ‘married’ to five women and had reared several adopted children – and the scarcity of ready explanations endowed the skimpy available facts with the aura of myth. But locked away in Billy’s office closet lay files of clippings and photographs documenting the transformation of Billy from she to he, as well as a legacy of annotated comic routines, musical arrangements, and program notes. These revealed to Diane Wood Middlebrook how Billy scattered clues and riddles night after night about the drag she wore. These hints were so bold that they helped conceal Billy’s secrets. With brio and pathos, Suits Me tells the life story of this brilliant deceiver, who lived and loved in two skins, one of each sex.

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Details

ISBN 9780395654897
Genre Autobiography/Biography; Music
Copyright Date 1998
Publication Date 01-Jun-98
Publisher Houghton Mifflin
Format Hardcover
No. of Pages 326
Language English
Rating NotRated
Subject Jazz musicians; Jazz Musicians – United States – Biography; Jazz Musicians/ United States/ Biography; Transvestites; Transvestites/ United States/ Biography
BookID 12680

Author: LFWBooks