| PRODUCT DETAILS | | Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton |  | |
Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton
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 not. 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.
Manufacturer: Mariner Books
Price: $4.49
 Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton
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| User Reviews |  | suits me
rating: 5
After many years I foud the book Suits Me on e-bay. Perfect condition. shipment was speedy. Thanks.
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i wanted more...
rating: 3
I really was very interested in this story of Billy Tipton, a trans musician who kept his birth sex private until his death in 1989. I just wish this book had been written by someone else, someone who would treat him with respect.
First off, Billy Tipton, as far as i can tell, had no "double life". As an adult, he chose to live as a man, identify as a man, marry as a man, die as a man... sooooo where's the duplicity?
I wish that Diane Wood Middlebrook, and others who write the stories of dead trans men and "passing women" [both descriptions are either anachronistic or potenitally disrepectful, respectively- please don't hate me for my choice of language, i feel like using both of those signifiers respects a width of identity that might have applied- we have no idea how people would identify if they lived now] would STOP obsessing about HOW and IF these men deceived their wives, and whether or not the couple in question had sex with each other. For Christs sake, is that really the most important topic when discussing who Billy was? Did his wives know or didn't they? Come on... I would imagine that Billy Tipton's wives simply had more respect for his privacy and identity than did the author of this alienating book, and chose to continue to respect him after he died.
i gave it 3 stars because there are glimpses of Billy as a human being, which were fascinating and charming, and because there is a dearth of history written about "trans men and passing women". And because Billy Tipton is a part of my history. Read it, but grit your teeth!!
i'd also reccomend Trumpet, by Jackie Kaye, a fictional novel that is pretty clearly based on Billy Tipton's life. It follows a dead Trumpet player's widow and son dealing with the public's reaction to the post mortem revelation of Joss Moody's birth sex. I enjoyed this novel significantly more than Suits Me...
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everyone is amazed by this story
rating: 5
I read this book several years ago. I heard about the book on National Public radio, and the story was irresistable. I loved the book, and have since told the story to many people. EVERYONE is amazed.
I see that Amazon is packaging Suits Me with a book about transgender that has something to do with basketball player Dennis Rodman. Look, Rodman is a publicity-seeking freak; "Billy" Tipton was a woman forced to dress as a man in the 1940s and '50s in order to get jobs in jazz bands. You can contrast the two, but you can't compare them.
By the way, as a teaser, as it's explained in Suits Me, Tipton had three wives. To this day, one wife says she knew Tipton was a woman, another insists Tipton was a man, and the third doesn't know what to make of the whole story. Like I said, this story is AMAZING!
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A great biography
rating: 5
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 dull one.
It was neither, the story was fascinating and apparently true and the writing was vibrant.
I came in with few expectations and ended up with no regrets. Enjoy it.
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The Role of a Lifetime
rating: 4
Submitted for your consideration: the curious tale of one Dorothy Tipton, AKA Billy Tipton---jazz pianist, husband, father, showman, raconteur, and male impersonator par excellence.
On the surface, this story does seem like fodder for Rod Serling. Billy Tipton was a riddle, wrapped in an enigma, but his story is nonetheless quintessentially American. Nobody excels at reinvention quite as well as Americans. Reinventing oneself is part of the American dream, and as author Diane Middlebrook explains, Dorothy Tipton adopted male clothing and became Billy Tipton in order to pursue her dream of becoming a jazz artist. The chances of female instrumentalists for joining or fronting jazz bands were slim and none in 1935. But Billy/Dorothy was very versatile, likable, and energetic and she parlayed her talents as a musician, arranger and showman into a respectable career, as the leader of small jazz combos in the Western U.S. Paradoxically, her fear of being exposed as a male impersonator, or "cross-dresser" in the parlance of the time, kept her mired in the semi-successful life of a musician who played "the circuit."
I think this book succeeds best as a portrait of Americana. Middlebrook does a fine job of capturing the flavor of Oklahoma, Kansas City, Spokane and the places in between that Billy traversed as a musician. She also delineates very well the fresh-scrubbed, impish, oddly sympathetic figure of Billy herself. Where she stumbles a bit is in her tendency to overanalyze, and to sometimes adopt the tone of Billy's risque and cheap humor within her own writing--she sometimes goes for the too easy and the too obvious turn of phrase. She also sidesteps the issue of Tipton's Lesbianism ( though Billy formed several long term relationships with women and adopted the role of husband to her "wives"). It's all a bit confusing. But because Tipton was not "woman identified" and adopted the role of a man, Middlebrook isn't sure whether to call her a Lesbian. Somehow I don't think the biographers of Romaine Brooks had this problem. Middlebrook is a veteran biographer of high-brow poets like Anne Sexton, and an "odd duck" like Billy must have been a great challenge for her to write about--hence, the somewhat tacked-on, weak resolution in the book's final page.
Still, the book is by and large very entertaining and well worth reading. Americans have an appetite for stories about chameleon-like personalities. Witness "The Great Impostor" with Tony Curtis, and the more recent "Catch Me If you Can" movie with Leonardo DaCaprio. Perhaps people admire these "poseurs'' ability to adapt for their own survival, or maybe it's just that most people at some time in their lives feel as if they are "faking it", or have doubts about their own identity. Billy Tipton was basically a very common and decent person who held on to an uncommon secret for fifty years. Her life celebrates both the value of the groundbreaking individual,who who didn't accept the constraints of gender, and the value of the hardworking common citizen who reaps only the reward of being remembered fondly at the end of life. Hers was a life worth pondering---interesting and troubling,and worthy of this biography.
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Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton
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