大象传媒

A new dramatisation for 大象传媒 Radio 4’s Riot Girls series brings Trumpet, Scottish author and poet Jackie Kay’s debut novel and winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize, to life.

When celebrated jazz trumpeter Joss Moody dies, his adopted son Colman makes an extraordinary discovery – the man he adored as his father was, in fact, a woman.

Jackie Kay’s fiercely pioneering novel, written in 1998 and now considered a modern classic, was partly inspired by the incredible true-life story of jazz musician Billy Tipton, whose death resulted in the same remarkable revelation.

Just how did Tipton conceal a secret of such magnitude from close friends, family and even lovers?

On the 21st of January 1989, talented jazz musician Billy Tipton, then aged 74, collapsed at home, having refused to call the doctor about symptoms he had put down to emphysema. In fact, he was suffering from a haemorrhaging ulcer – a condition that would sadly prove fatal. And as paramedics undressed the dying man in order to attempt resuscitation, they made a remarkable discovery.

Tipton, wasn’t a man at all. Even the musicians he had travelled with, many of the women he had shared his life with, and his three adopted sons, had no idea that Tipton was in fact a woman.

Who was the real Billy Tipton?

Billy was born Dorothy Lucille Tipton in Oklahoma City and raised by an aunt in Kansas City. She was musically gifted. At school, where she was known as “Tippy”, she learned how to play the organ, piano and saxophone. But despite her natural talent, being a girl meant she wasn’t allowed to join the school band.

As she grew older, Tipton became passionate about playing jazz, but there was an unwritten rule working against her: women simply didn’t get hired. So the young musician began binding her breasts and wearing prosthetic genitals in order to pass as a man and more easily find work as a band member. And as Tipton’s career advanced, she decided to permanently transform into a male musician and adopted the name Billy Lee Tipton.

As a man, Tipton had no shortage of work. He played and toured with a number of successful jazz ensembles. And in Longview in 1951, he founded the Billy Tipton Trio, performing with hair slicked back and a white dinner jacket. (Kenny Richards, who played bass with the band, admits he had no idea that Tipton was a woman until after his former bandleader’s death.) The group gained local popularity, and after being scouted they recorded two albums: Sweet Georgia Brown and Billy Tipton Plays Hi-Fi on Piano.

The trio were on the up. They were offered more albums and the position of house band at a casino in Reno, Nevada, which went hand-in-hand with a whopping fee. But Tipton turned it down. Instead, he chose to move to Spokane where he became a talent agent, as well as continuing to play with the band. Some think Tipton’s decision to swerve “the big time” was about avoiding exposure, in order to keep his true identity safely hidden.

The women who called themselves Mrs Tipton

Tipton was never actually married, but he shared his life with five different women.

Tipton first lived with Non Earl Harrell, a dancer 14 years his senior. The young musician was then in a relationship for several years with a singer called June, before meeting 18-year-old Betty Cox.

Tipton and Cox lived together as man and wife, but despite the sexual nature of their relationship, Betty didn't realise Tipton was female. This was probably in part due to her sheltered upbringing, and in part to the fact that Tipton told his partners that a serious car accident had resulted in damaged genitals and broken ribs that required binding.

When Tipton was in a relationship with a woman named Maryann he met Kitty Kelly, a stripper known as “the Irish Venus”. Kitty had an illness that prevented them from having a sexual relationship so they adopted three boys – John, Scott, and William.

Tipton proved to be a doting father, going on camping trips and to the movies with his sons. None of the boys suspected that their father wasn’t the man he claimed to be.

A long-lasting legacy

Tipton is celebrated within queer culture as an oppressed individual who bravely found their own route to recognition and success in a man’s world. The artist’s extraordinary life has inspired an opera, a play and a jazz musical, as well as Jackie Kay’s celebrated novel. And in Seattle, there was even a sax group named after the jazz legend: The Billy Tipton Memorial Saxophone Quartet.

Before his death, Tipton discarded all the paraphernalia he used to conceal his sex, presumably aware that his true identity would soon be revealed. Perhaps he wanted to prove how gender is in the eye of the beholder, and in the mind of the individual, and about so much more than just anatomy.