Previous Home Next

Billy Tipton was a lounge pianist from the Northwest who upon his death in 1989 was discovered to have been biologically female. According to press accounts at the time, and confirmed by Diane Wood Middlebrooks' thoughtful 1999 book Suits Me: The Double Life Of Billy Tipton, at least two of Tipton's five wives and all three of his (adopted) children had been unaware of his true gender. I scored this Tipton album for a buck at a flea market in Buffalo in the mid-'90s.