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"Suits Me is the biography of a now notorious jazz musician named Billy Tipton, who grew up as Dorothy Tipton in Oklahoma City and Kansas City but lived as a man from the time she was nineteen until she died at age seventy-four. Billy Tipton's death in Spokane, Washington, made news all over the world, not because he was celebrated as a musician but because the scale of his deception - he had been "married" to five women and had reared several adopted children - and the scarcity of ready explanations endowed the skimpy available facts with the aura of myth." "But locked away in Billy's office closet lay files of clippings and photographs documenting the transformation of Billy from she to he, as well as a legacy of annotated comic routines, musical arrangements, and program notes. These revealed to Diane Wood Middlebrook how Billy scattered clues and riddles night after night about the drag she wore. These hints were so bold that they helped conceal Billy's secrets." "With brio and pathos, Suits Me tells the life story of this brilliant deceiver, who lived and loved in two skins, one of each sex."--Jacket.… (more)
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Nevertheless, the fact that Dorothy Tipton (as Billy was named at birth) started dressing as a man to pursue a career as a musician was definitely known in her home state of Oklahoma and surrounding areas when she started out. As much as a modern reader would expect people in the early part of the 20th century (and in that part of the country) to be up in arms about her cross-dressing, or expose her ruse at any chance, they didn't. Billy was part of the entertainment world, and "show people" had different rules that the average person didn't always understand, but also didn't infringe upon. As Billy found more success as a musician and began moving farther and farther from home, years passed where no one knew his secret. Slowly it became something he really had to take steps to keep hidden, lest he lose everything.
Billy lived with 5 different women over the course of his life, calling them all his wives even though they were never legally married. The women the author spoke to claimed they didn't know Billy's secret, nor did they notice anything amiss in their relationships with him. The truth was revealed when he died, but with very few exceptions, the revelation didn't change how anyone he knew viewed him - he was still remembered as the man they had known, in spite of being physically female.