Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.60 (943 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0395957893 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 348 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-10-08 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
The jazz pianist Billy Tipton was born in Oklahoma City as Dorothy Tipton, but almost nobody knew the truth until the day he died, in Spokane 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." As Billy Tipton herself said, "Some people might think I'm a freak or a hermaphrodite. I'm a normal person. This has been my choice." This jazz-era biography evokes the rich popular-music history of the Great Depression and reads like a detective story.. I'm not
A great biography Oenophile I am always on the lookout for interesting books. I got the recommendation from Bob Dylan's show "Theme Time Radio" and I have to admit that I was a bit sceptical about Tipton's dual role and the attempted coverup and whether this book would end up being a d. This is a true story you don't want to miss reading. A Customer The shear thought that a woman the public had access to passed as a male jazz musician in the mid 20th century is mind-boggling. Only until Billy Tipton's death was her secret revealed. I found myself racing through this book at every spare moment satisfying. Meticulously researched, dry and unimaginative presentation It suprised me that such a fasinating subject could become a difficult to enjoy and ultimately unsatisfying read. The author's avoidance of focussing on Tipton's homosexuality and seeing her life as a pragmatic decision due to her love of jazz and the constr
--Rebecca Brown. Billy Tipton was a jazz performer who played in clubs throughout the Midwest for nearly 50 years. Only with Tipton's death in 1989 was it revealed that the five-times-married father to three boys was biologically female. The author traces the life of this itinerant jazz musician over several decades and through changing constructions of gender. Diane Wood Middlebrook's biography describes the transformation of Dorothy Tipton, a white Oklahoman who was not allowed to play jazz because she was a girl, into Billy Tipton, a male pianist and bandleader. Tipton never made the big time as a musician and ended up working as a booking agent in Spokane, Washington. In addition to examining what gender i