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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Billy Tipton was a jazz performer who played in clubs throughout the Midwest for nearly 50 years. Tipton never made the big time as a musician and ended up working as a booking agent in Spokane, Washington. Only with Tipton's death in 1989 was it revealed that the five-times-married father to three boys was biologically female. Diane Wood Middlebrook's biography describes the transformation of Dorothy Tipton, a white Oklahoman who was not allowed to play jazz because she was a girl, into Billy Tipton, a male pianist and bandleader. The author traces the life of this itinerant jazz musician over several decades and through changing constructions of gender.
Billy Tipton was a jazz performer who played in clubs throughout the Midwest for nearly 50 years. Tipton never made the big time as a musician and ended up working as a booking agent in Spokane, Washington. Only with Tipton's death in 1989 was it revealed that the five-times-married father to three boys was biologically female. Diane Wood Middlebrook's biography describes the transformation of Dorothy Tipton, a white Oklahoman who was not allowed to play jazz because she was a girl, into Billy Tipton, a male pianist and bandleader. The author traces the life of this itinerant jazz musician over several decades and through changing constructions of gender.
Middlebrook, whose biography of Anne Sexton was noted for its controversial use of tape recordings and notes made during the poet's psychiatric treatment, was approached by Kitty Tipton Oakes, one of Billy's former wives, to write this biography; she interviewed his/her friends, spouses, family members, and colleagues and found them to have different, yet universally sympathetic, readings of Tipton's gender. In addition to examining what gender is, Suits Me also asks to whom it belongs: the individual or the people who interact with the individual. --Rebecca Brown
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Middlebrook (Anne Sexton: A Biography, Houghton, 1991) will fascinate another large audience with her exhaustive account of the life of jazz musician Billy Tipton. Born Dorothy Tipton in Oklahoma in 1914, and reborn as Billy Tipton in 1933, Billy passed as a man until death at age 74. Suits Me uses family interviews, anecdotes from musicians, jazz fans, lovers ("wives"), and friends to tell the story of a brilliant deception. The sensitive storytelling reveals thought-provoking perspectives about gender and the traditional American family, while capturing the social history of traveling jazz bands for 40 years. The family photographs and letters are particularly noteworthy in the exploration of Billy's life between the sexes, and there are extensive, enlightening notes and a bibliography. Highly recommended for academic and public libraries and/or libraries with women's studies or gay/lesbian/bisexual collections.
-?Lisa N. Johnston, Sweet Briar Coll. Lib., VA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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