Private Lives : A Jazz Pianist’s Ultimate Improvisation

When Kelly Capehart visited the old man who lived in the yellow and white trailer next door, he encouraged him to talk about his days playing the piano in a jazz trio. The topic, Capehart said, seemed to cheer up the man he called Mr. T.

After Mr. T. died on Jan. 21 at age 74, Capehart, 25, tidied the old man’s trailer, examining the contents with more than the usual curiosity people have for others’ keepsakes.

Mr. T’s possessions included books on Elvis Presley, an ivory money clip and a row of men’s shoes, each with a lift in the heel. But Capehart never found what he was really looking for--something that would help explain to him why Mr. T, better known as Billy Lee Tipton, had lived as a man when he was actually a woman.

Capehart was not the only one searching for information. No one but one of the former wives of the late jazz musician claimed to have realized he was a woman before his secret was revealed by paramedics answering the call at Tipton’s trailer.

“I’m still trying to search for answers and clues,” said Capehart, who described Tipton as a “quiet, saddened man.”

The wave of national media interest that followed the revelation of Tipton’s secret last month was triggered by speculation that Tipton had masqueraded as a man to succeed in jazz, a field that was difficult for women in the ‘30s. Reports had Tipton’s charade taking him to great heights in his profession, performing, for example, with renowned Big Band musician Jack Teagarden.

But Teagarden’s sister, Norma Teagarden of San Francisco, said Tipton never played with her late brother. And it appears to many who knew Tipton that the decision to change gender actually was motivated as much by personal as career reasons.

“Everybody wants to leap on this idea that he was a girl who played piano and wanted to make it on the big scene,” said Don Eagle, a Spokane musician who knew Tipton. “It’s kind of a cop out, isn’t it? I say this was actually a gender change.”

Norma Teagarden, 77, agreed. She said Tipton had lived in her mother-in-law’s Oklahoma City rooming house in the 1930s and was even then a woman who preferred to wear men’s clothes.

Could Tipton then have been a rare, modern example of an independent, often eccentric type from earlier times--women who successfully pass as men?

According to Jonathan Ned Katz, a New York author of two books on the history of homosexuality in America, many of these women died without ever explaining their conduct.

Katz calls such individuals “passing women” or “crossing women,” the latter because “they cross over into the role and receive the power and the money associated with men.”

This usurping of male privilege has provoked “extreme societal anger,” said Lillian Faderman, who explores some cases in her 1981 book, “Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women From the Renaissance to the Present.”

In earlier times, women discovered to be living as men often were punished, sometimes being hanged, mutilated or burned alive, said Faderman, an English professor at California State University, Fresno.

She said she knows of at least 400 cases of women passing as men in the Civil War, and can cite scores of examples from the 1900s and earlier. The phenomenon is less common today, probably because women’s roles are less restricted than they once were.

(Men who passed as women have been of less interest to sociological researchers, Katz said, perhaps because men did not gain status or freedom by becoming women.)

Though some people may dismiss individuals like Tipton--who lived for 50 years or more concealing an intimate truth--as lonely, pathetic or curious figures, “How do we know there weren’t a lot of satisfactions in this life?” Katz asked. “. . . There may have been great joys in this life, as well as a strain to keep up a mask.”

Tipton’s former wife, Kitty Oakes, has sold her story to the Star, and will appear tonight on the Fox television show “A Current Affair.” She is not giving other interviews about her husband until the Star story runs next month, said her agent, Barron Stringfellow.

Tipton and Oakes--who, according to a handwritten addition to Tipton’s will is to receive only $1 from his estate--had three adopted sons. They could not be reached or would not comment.

In her original comments to Spokane’s newspaper, the Spokesman-Review, Oakes insisted that Tipton “gave up everything” to pursue a jazz career, saying, “There were certain rules and regulations in those days if you were going to be a musician.”

Stringfellow said that Oakes, who claims she was unaware of her husband’s secret until after her divorce 10 years ago, contends that Tipton married three times simply to “help him protect his secret.”

After Oakes reveals the Tipton she knows, “Everybody will realize there’s no sexual, ugly, yucky story here,” Stringfellow said. “This story has to be caught now, before it gets any seedier.”

Marian McPartland, a noted jazz pianist and host of the National Public Radio show, “Piano Jazz,” said of Oakes’ contention that Tipton kept her secret for career reasons: “I can only say that if it’s true, this person must have been somebody with a great commitment to the music. Or maybe this was someone who just felt more comfortable as a man.”

Competing as a female jazz instrumentalist in the ‘30s was difficult, said McPartland.

But it was done, she said, noting that performers she admired such as Hazel Scott and Cleo Brown had overcome the adversities.

Many women jazz instrumentalists of the era were forced to restrict themselves to all-girl bands, said Peggy Gilbert, an 84-year-old Studio City resident and a tenor saxophonist who was in the Peggy Gilbert All-Girl Band in the ‘30s and now is in the Dixie Belles ensemble. She recalled there was one woman who dressed like a man to play jazz in the ‘30s but added, “That’s just the way she worked. She didn’t live that way.”

Tipton told acquaintances he was born in Oklahoma City but said little else about his childhood. He arrived in the Spokane area in the early ‘50s, forming the Billy Tipton Trio with bassist Ron Kilde and drummer Dick O’Neil.

Musicians in Spokane agree the trio was known only in the region. “They speak of him playing with some of the great bands in the world, but he was a rather pedestrian piano player, I’m afraid,” said Spokane drummer John Luppert, 70.

Those who remember Tipton most vividly today, aside from his family, are almost exclusively male musicians now in their 60s and 70s. Though the news of Tipton’s secret was a shock to them, it hasn’t altered their feelings about their colleague.

“He was a decent man,” Luppert said simply.

Tipton was kind and had “a heart as big as a wash tub,” said drummer O’Neil.

Eagle said Tipton was the person who talked a local movie theater into holding a benefit for musicians or their families when they were broke and saw to it that out-of-town musicians had a way home after gigs. “We all loved him for that,” Eagle said.

O’Neil, now a retirement home manager in Spokane, recalled that Tipton took him out of a job as a Longview, Wash., millworker and gave him a chance as a drummer. O’Neil went on the road with Tipton’s trio in the ‘50s, when he recalled they encountered female instrumentalists playing in clubs.

By then, if not earlier, there was no particular reason for Tipton to dress and act as a man, O’Neil said, recalling that one thing his colleague “insisted on was class.” While other road bands wore the same stage tuxedoes for two weeks straight, Tipton’s trio came to town with “18 sets of clothes and new Buicks.”

The man who then styled Tipton’s hair, Gene Chesurin, owner of G’s Used Cars and Barber Shop in Spokane, recalled that Tipton was concerned with image and was “fussy” about haircuts.

Bob Woehrlin, his one-time shoe repairman, noted that Tipton sacrificed comfort for vanity’s sake: “He was short and he liked to be tall. So I’d build up his heels and that would throw his shoes out of balance.”

Eagle described Tipton as “a short, tubby little guy” who wore his suit coats too long. “He had rosy pink cheeks and never looked like he needed a shave.”

Those who met Tipton recall he was feminine in appearance. But that didn’t stop flirting women fans from congregating backstage, Chesurin said. Tipton’s bassist and drummer were more popular with women. But Tipton had his share of admirers.

The first of three women Tipton claimed to have married was known simply as Betty, said Luppert, who played with the band in Lewiston, Idaho, on a bill shortly after the couple claimed to have wed. “They acted like any other giddy, young bride and groom,” he recalled. “They held hands, real sweet. Very lovey-dovey.”

O’Neil recalled that when Tipton dropped Betty, he soon was escorting the woman he described as his new wife, Mary Ann Baltzo; Tipton sported a bright new pair of cuff links he said she gave him. In 1958, his band stopped touring and Tipton bought a house with Mary Ann in Spokane. Tipton still played some but worked days as a talent agent with the Dave Sobol Agency, which is now marketing Oakes’ version of Tipton’s story.

Tipton eventually split up with Baltzo, who was mentioned in a 1965 will but could not be reached for comment, and married Oakes. But after that marriage failed, Tipton moved to the trailer where he spent his last decade, said neighbor Capehart.

Capehart recalled that Tipton’s greatest concern was his teen-aged son, Billy Tipton Jr., who lived with him until his death. “He wanted to raise him right,” Capehart said. “He tried to be a good father to them all (his sons), but he did say Billy Jr. was sort of special to him.” (Tipton left all his possessions to Billy Jr. in a handwritten update to his 1965 will, except for the $1 to his wife and a $1 to each of his two other sons.)

Capehart said he knew Tipton was ill for a month because his car was parked in front of the trailer. That was unusual because Tipton lived by an unwavering schedule, driving every morning to work at the agency, and returning home each night. Capehart said Tipton lived his life within a five-mile radius of his trailer.

Tipton, who died of a bleeding ulcer, endured his ailments rather than seeking medical attention and having his secret revealed, Capehart theorized, adding, “He was willing to die before he would let anyone find out.”

If that is true, it would not be unique to Tipton, said author Faderman, who recalled similar historical incidents, including the case of a Santa Cruz stage coach driver known as One-Eyed Charlie Parker, who suffered and died of breast cancer rather than reveal her identity.

O’Neil last talked to his former band leader on Tipton’s Dec. 29 birthday. Though Tipton was ill, O’Neil found him working at the agency, where he said he had to drum up a few commissions by booking bands for New Year’s Eve parties. That the once “classy” pianist had been reduced to such straits while ailing made him sad, O’Neil said.

The drummer and the pianist discussed wives in their last talk. Though it took him three tries, he had a good wife now, O’Neil said, adding he told Tipton he wished he had someone to care for him.

“Yeah,” Tipton replied. “I never did do too good picking wives.”