#billytipton

[theriotgrrrlproject]

Billy Tipton. Jazz playing, saxophone skilled, cigar smoking, bandleading dude. Transgender man living in 1940's USA, brave is an understatement. Billy's work is still taught to jazz students today. #pleasedontstop #icantliveifyoustop #letigre #hottopic #billytipton

[lgbt-history-archive]

Billy Tipton (December 29, 1914 – January 21, 1989), center, with bandmates Ron Kilde, left, and Dick O’Neil, right, c. 1955. Photo c/o AP. Billy Tipton, who was born one hundred and two years ago today, was an American jazz musician and bandleader who arguably is best known for the postmortem revelation that he was a trans man. As a high school student, Tipton studied music, focusing on jazz piano and saxophone; as he began to pursue a serious music career, Tipton took his father’s nickname, Billy, and more actively worked to present as male. While, at first, he only fully presented as male while performing, by 1940, Tipton fully had transitioned to living full-time as a man. Starting in 1936, Tipton made his living as a musician and bandleader, and he gained a moderate amount of fame in the 1950s as the leader of the Billy Tipton Trio (pictured). By the late 1970s, however, Tipton’s worsening arthritis forced him to retire from music. In the early 1950s, Tipton started a seven-year relationship with Betty Cox, who later remembered him as “the most fantastic love of my life.” Tipton hid his birth sex from Cox by explaining, in a story that he used for the rest of his life, that he had been in a serious car accident that resulted in damaged genitals and seriously broken ribs; in order to protect his chest from further injury, Tipton said, he had to bind it. In 1960, Tipton ended his relationship with Cox and settled in Spokane, Washington with nightclub dancer Kitty Kelly, known professionally as “The Irish Venus.” The couple adopted three sons and participated in their local PTA and Boy Scouts; the relationship, however, was not happy. In the late 1970s, Tipton left Kelly, moved into a mobile home with his sons and lived, in poverty, until his death. Billy Tipton died on January 21, 1989; he was seventy-four. While paramedics attempted to revive him, Tipton’s son, William, learned that his father was a transgender man. While the family sought to keep Tipton’s birth sex a secret by having Tipton cremated, they soon were approached by media organizations and they went public with the story. #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #BillyTipton