LEGAL FILE

A woman whose baby son was adopted in 1963 by jazz musician Billy Tipton has sued Tipton’s estate because the jazzman turned out to be a woman posing as a man. Patricia Clark, alleged in the suit filed last week that Tipton defrauded her by promising to be a good father to the boy, Jon Clark. Tipton’s death in January from a bleeding ulcer revealed that the leader of a jazz trio was a woman. Tipton, believed to be 75 years old at death, had apparently assumed a man’s identity early in life in hope of succeeding in the male-dominated field of jazz. Clark said she felt angry and betrayed when she learned Tipton’s secret. She said her fragile relationship with her son, who has known she was his mother since 1986, has been shattered. She is seeking unspecified damages. Jon Clark, however, said that he’s never been close to his mother and that she might be another of many people trying to profit from Tipton’s story. “I owe my dad and I don’t owe anyone else,” Jon Clark said. Tipton, a pianist and saxophone player, traveled throughout the West with the Billy Tipton Trio in the 1950s before settling in Spokane and becoming a musicians’ agent.