Tipton, center standing, with the trio
December 29, 1914– Attend the tale of Billy Tipton. I first became aware of her when she died in Spokane (the city where I grew up) & the truth was discovered.
Tipton was a woman who lived as a man for 53 years, from 21 years old until her final curtain call at 74 years old. Her 3 adopted sons never suspected a thing. Here is the fun part: Tipton lived with 5 women over 5 decades, all of them attractive, even va-va-vavoom hot. She had intercourse with all 5, & yet none of them noticed that her man was a woman, well, number 4 figured it out eventually. Like her thousands of fans, Tipton’s girls were hoodwinked by one of the great performances of all time.
Dorothy Lucille Tipton decided to become Billy Tipton in 1935, ostensibly because it was the only way an aspiring female jazz musician could get work in a nearly exclusively male avocation. The ruse wasn’t really all that difficult. Tipton had a boyish face & a figure full, but she was not what they would call “curvy”. She had a big bust, but no waist. With a sheet wrapped around her chest, padding in the crotch, & a man’s wardrobe, she passed. Tipton was boyishly good-looking. Girls found him adorable, plus he was in a band as a talented pianist, horn player, & singer.
At the start, Tipton was strictly a crossdresser, making no effort to hide her gender during those times when she wasn’t making music. She lived as a lesbian with a woman with the nutty name of Non Earl Harrell. Initially they were based in Oklahoma City, but by 1940 they had moved to Joplin, Missouri, unbelievably, at the time, the entertainment center of the Midwest. In Joplin, Tipton began to pretend to be a male full-time, a pose she would adopt for the rest of her life.
Tipton & Non Earl split in 1942. After a relationship of a few years with a singer named June, Tipton took up with Betty Cox, a pretty 19 year. The couple was together for 7 years. Cox later claimed that they had a particularly passionate heterosexual relationship. She even thought she’d had a miscarriage. I sometimes I think I don’t really know my husband, but after the first 7 years, I think I knew which sex he was. Just like the husband & me, Tipton & Cox only made love in the dark. Don’t most people?
Tipton never removed his underwear & he wore a jockstrap that was fitted with special stuffing. He wore massive chest bindings at all times, supposedly for an “old injury”. He never allowed himself to be touched below the waist. He refused to share a bathroom. Cox may also have been distracted. She dated other men while she was with Tipton.
In 1958, Tipton had his own jazz trio with a growing reputation. He was on the verge of a successful career as a musician. A Reno nightclub tried to book the trio as their house band. Instead, Tipton took a job as a booking agent in Spokane. He also got a regular gig playing with the house band at a club called The Tin Pan Alley (it is still there, but it has been renamed The Bing Crosby after Spokane’s most famous native). The band played swing standards rather than the jazz that Tipton preferred. His performances also included sketches where he imitated celebrities like Liberace & Elvis Presley. In some of these sketches, he played a little girl, but he never impersonated a woman, & he would make jokes about the queers. Perhaps he feared fame would lead to his unmasking & he felt he’d gone as far as he dared.
In 1960s Spokane, Tipton married a pretty, but troubled stripper named Kitty Kelly. She later claimed that she & Tipton never had a sex life, but in other respects they lived a stereotypical working-class Spokane life. They adopted 3 boys, but neither could handle the kids when they became teenagers. After a bitter fight in 1980, Tipton moved into a trailer with his sons. From there it was all downhill. The boys split, Tipton couldn’t find work, & he was afraid to see a doctor.
This is when I read the astonishing story of Billy Tipton in an article from the Spokesman Review newspaper, sent to me by my parental units who still live there. It seems that Tipton had remained in Spokane, living in poverty, until he collapsed & died in 1989. It was the paramedics who were trying to revive him who uncovered the truth about Tipton. Death must have come as some sort of relief; Tipton had been pretending for 54 years.
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