Billy Tipton

William Lee "Billy" Tipton (born Dorothy Lucille Tipton, December 29, 1914 – January 21, 1989) was an American jazz musician and bandleader. He is also notable for the postmortem discovery that although he lived his adult life as a man, he was assigned female at birth.

Early life

Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Tipton grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, where he was raised by an aunt after his parents' divorce. He subsequently rarely saw his father, G. W. Tipton, a pilot who sometimes took him for airplane rides. As a high-school student, Tipton went by the nickname Tippy and became interested in music, especially jazz, studying piano and saxophone. He returned to Oklahoma for his final year of high school and joined the school band there.

As Tipton began a more serious music career, he adopted his father's nickname, Billy, and more actively worked to pass as male by binding his breasts and padding his pants. At first, Tipton only presented as male in performance, but by 1940 was living as a man in private life as well. Two of Tipton's female cousins, with whom Tipton maintained contact over the years, were the only persons known to be privy to Tipton's assigned sex.

Tipton

Coordinates: 52°31′33″N 2°04′30″W / 52.5259°N 2.0751°W / 52.5259; -2.0751

Tipton is a town in the borough of Sandwell, West Midlands, England, with a population of around 38,777 at the 2011 census. Tipton is located about halfway between Birmingham and Wolverhampton. It is a part of the West Midlands conurbation and is a part of the Black Country.

Historically within Staffordshire, Tipton was an urban district until 1938, when it became a municipal borough. The vast majority of the Borough of Tipton was transferred into West Bromwich County Borough in 1966, although parts of the old borough were absorbed into an expanded Dudley borough and the newly-created County Borough of Warley. Along with the rest of West Bromwich and Warley, Tipton became part of the Sandwell Metropolitan Borough in 1974 and remains within this local authority to this day.

Tipton was once one of the most heavily industrialised towns in the Black Country, with thousands of people employed in different sections of the town's industries, but most of its factories have closed since the 1970s and it has gradually developed into a commuter town occupied mostly by people working in other parts of the region.

Tipton (surname)

Tipton is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:

Tipton (disambiguation)

Tipton is a town in the West Midlands, England.

Tipton may also refer to:

Places

United States

Other uses