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Published on 02/16/1998 All articles from this issue

Morning Forum author unmasks life of mysterious jazz singer

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By Marjorie Kellogg-Van Rheeden

Special to the Town Crier

A hush fell over the attending Los Altos Morning Forum audience on Feb. 16 when Diane Middlebrook began to unravel the secrets of jazz musician Billy Tipton, a woman who masqueraded as a man, had three wives and three children during a 50-year professional and personal life. No one suspected.

Middlebrook read from the opening chapter of her new biography on the mysterious jazz singer, titled "Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton." The book is set for a June release.

"In 1989, living in a trailer outside Spokane, Wash., with his teenage son, William, the aging white jazz musician had been ill for two weeks. Near collapse, he refused to see a doctor. After carrying him into the bathroom and closing the door, the distraught William decided to call his mother with whom he hadn't spoken in over a year. She said to call 911.

"The paramedics arrived, examined Billy, then asked, "Did your father have a sex change?

"After Billy died ... Kitty wanted to protect herself and her husband, so she swore the funeral director to secrecy and arranged cremation.

"But the coroner decided to tip off a journalist and advised him to 'get hold of the death certificate.'

"The headline, 'Jazz musician and wife conceal fantastic secret,' spread through the wire service and was even picked up by the New York Times."

"He" was dead, but who was "She?" "She" was the actor, "He" was the role.

Middlebrook, a Spokane native, was entrusted to write the biography and unravel the mystery.

A locked closet contained scrapbooks of Billy's jazz trio, family members in Oklahoma, where he was born, and the nightclub stripper who quit her job to become Billy's wife.

"Going through such information is like lifting the roof off a dollhouse and looking at all the rooms that a person has passed through ... access to the social life and private soul of another human being," Middlebrook said.

"The main part of Billy's life, spent in secrecy, had not been written down. Unanswered questions can only be partially answered as to why she took the disguise," Middlebrook said, "how she worked with male dance bands, and managed three successful marriages (to women) without revealing he was a she."

Middlebrook, an English professor at Stanford University, has won numerous awards for non-fiction. She felt stories left by the dead are fair game for the living to know.

"They cannot be shamed, they cannot be hurt," she said. "What is left behind in a relationship is cultural property that helps us understand other people. The records of the past are a very rich and important heritage that connects you with others."