Billy wwhen natural as Dorothy Lucille Tipton within Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA. In the area of 1933 she took the role of the male musician & eventually had into a band inside Kansas City, Missouri.

When you took a Great Depression and World War II, he played with elastic of Jack Teagarden and Ross Carlyle, among others. Within 1954 he formed the Billy Tipton Trio using drummer Dick O'Neal and bass player Ron Kilde and played with them for more than ten years. Fallowing his career he settled down as an amusement professional around Spokane, Washington.

Tipton was married 5 days, a endure period around 1960 to nightclub dancer Kitty Oakes. He told both of his married woman that he got been inside the grave car accident that experienced left him by having unhealed ribs, venereal disfigurement & sterility. He as well adopted leash boys & became the scoutmaster. Sole his parents, brother, & first cousin knew he got been natural female.

Around 1989 he suffered from hemorrhaging ulceration & refused to call for the doctor. When his dying within January 1989, a medical examiner told his personal a truth. None of his adoptive sons, ex-ex, associates or even band members use admitted to antecedently caring a gender assigned to him at birth.

A 1991 song "Tipton" by folksinger Phranc is a tribute to Billy Tipton.

The Billy Tipton Memorial Saxophone Quartet is a successful all-woman music class action from either a United States, and known as within tribute to Billy Tipton. Other recently it changed a title of the class action to just The Tiptons.

Books
Diane Wood Middlebrook - Lawsuits Us - A Double Life of Billy Tipton, Seaman Books (June One, 1999), ISBN 0395957893 [http://www.transhistory.org/history/TH_NewsClip_Tip.html Review]