Billy Tipton

Biography

Billy Tipton was a talented American jazz musician who lived his entire adult life as a man, a fact that remained unknown to the public and even his closest relatives until after his death. Born in Oklahoma City, Tipton began his professional music career in the 1930s. To be more readily accepted in the jazz scene, he adopted a male identity, which he maintained for the rest of his life.

As a bandleader, Tipton's group, The Billy Tipton Trio, gained regional popularity in the 1950s, recording two albums and becoming the house band at a hotel in Reno, Nevada. He was a respected pianist and saxophonist. He married several times and adopted three sons with his last wife, Kitty Oakes.

It was only after his death in 1989 that the paramedic who examined him discovered he had been assigned female at birth. The revelation stunned his family and the public, sparking a media frenzy and a broader cultural conversation about the nature of gender and identity. While the reasons for his choices were complex, his life is now understood as a significant part of transgender history, and he is recognized as a man who lived authentically in a time when there was little to no public understanding of what it meant to be transgender.