Crime Thriller Draws on Author's Southie Roots 

These days Bill Kelly, 70, author of the new crime thriller Brutal Harmony, enjoys the relatively calm pace of a Marco Island security guard. But Kelly's life story of growing up a Southie, doing impersonations on Boston morning radio, serving as a Boston cop, and singing as Frank Sinatra for Capitol Records is anything but sedate. It’s those life experiences that shape Brutal Harmony. 

Kelly grew up as a Southie in the mostly Irish working-class South Boston neighborhood southwest of downtown Boston. He was friends with notorious organized crime boss Whitey Bulger. They were close enough that Bulger gave Kelly a wedding gift. In fact, Kelly was living in one of Bulger’s apartments in Boston when the notorious crime boss suddenly disappeared in 1994. Bulger was later beaten to death by fellow inmates in a West Virginia prison on October 30, 2018. 

"I left the Boston area in 1994 when a certain other person named James Whitey Bulger left,” Kelly said. “In Southie, Whitey Bulger was like the Pied Piper. He was the person that everybody knew. And if you were his friend, you knew him as Jimmy. You didn't call him Whitey. The cops called him Whitey. The funny story is, I'm sitting in this bar with a friend of mine, who ended up being my best man at my wedding. I got a tap on the shoulder, and I turned around and I said, ‘Hey, Jimmy.’ It was Whitey. 'What's up?' He says, ‘Congratulations on your marriage.' And I said, ‘How'd you know?' This guy knew everything. He said, ‘Do you need anything?' I said ‘No, not really.’ I knew Jimmy was a gangster, but I didn't know anything else. So, I go home one day and I open up the door and my wife says in her Boston accent, ‘You know who was here'? And I said, 'no.’ 'Whitey Bulger. What are you doing with Whitey Bulger?' I said, 'I'm not doing anything.' He'd just come up with a brand-new stainless steel refrigerator. So, I didn't know whether I owed him. So, I'm riding around looking for him. Finally, I found him. He said ‘No, Kelly, that's your wedding present.' And 11 years later, I'm getting a divorce. I'm at the bar with my best man, again. He taps me on the shoulder again. I turn around to Jimmy and he says, 'I'm sorry to hear about your marriage.' I said, ‘Oh, jeez, you know about that too.' He said, 'So who are you staying with?' And I said, ‘Well, I'm staying with one of the Stapleton boys. The father was the fire commissioner in Boston. He says, “You got too much class. I've got a place for you to stay.' He showed me this place and it needed nothing. Brand new. So, I told him, 'I'm not going to need it long because I can't stay around here.' I just really wanted to get away and go to Florida. Fort Lauderdale. So, I ended up doing that. When I left, I went down to drop the keys off at the bar, and I said, ‘Would you give these to Jimmy?' This is 1994. They said, ‘We don't know where he is.' I said, ‘Okay,' and I grabbed the keys and they said, ‘What are you doing with the keys?' I said, 'I'll bring them down to the liquor store. He's probably down there.’ They said, 'He ain't there. He's gone.’ They said, ‘You don't understand. We don't know where he is. He's gone.’  Jimmy left to go wherever he went. And I left and went to Florida.”

Though Brutal Harmony is set in New Jersey, it borrows heavily from Kelly’s life experience as a Southie.

“The funny thing about growing up where I grew up in South Boston,” Kelly said, "is when you're a kid - and you could be the nicest kid in the world, but if you leave South Boston and you go to Cape Cod or whatever, and you get pulled over, you give your driver's license, and you're from South Boston, they pull you out of the car immediately."

Kelly said everything in Brutal Harmony is the real deal.

“Everything in here is real,” Kelly said. “I'm somebody that grew up in an area that had stuff like that going on,  and having been a police officer, I know what goes on."

Kelly was a Boston police officer until his show business talent found him on a hugely popular Boston radio show.

"I was doing comedy voices along with parody songs and things like that for the Matty in the Morning show on Kiss 108 FM,” Kelly said. “Finally, they asked me to come on with them full-time. I said I didn't see how I could do that since I’m a police officer. They said, ‘Well, what do you make as a cop?' I told them, and they doubled it. I worked Monday through Friday from six in the morning till 10:00. Doing stupid things. It was part of that morning drive, you know. On the Matty shows, I was known for doing traffic as Jim Ignatowski from Taxi. ‘Don't go down route 128, Matt. It's a mess. Okey doke.’ And then I did the Matty specials like it would be ‘Mr. Haney with the Matty in the Morning Show for just $29.95.’ My kids were young and they loved The Simpsons. I hadn't got to do that voice yet. So, I would videotape the show and put it on a cassette and put it in my car, and I'd drive down the road, and now it's Homer Simpson and Marge Simpson. ‘Oh, Marge, I want to talk to you."

All of Kelly’s impromptu impersonations are spot on. He's had a talent for impersonation since childhood.

"Since I was a kid watching cartoons,” he said. "And I grew up with funny neighbors.”

But it’s his ability to impersonate Frank Sinatra that set Kelly apart. He spent years performing as Frank Sinatra, a career that crescendoed when he was signed by Capitol Records to appear as Sinatra when the famed crooner came out with his Duets albums.

"I was getting a lot of shows,” Kelly said. "I got a call from Capitol Records the year Duets came out. She says, 'I'm Kathleen, I'm marketing for Capitol Records, and Mr. Sinatra's coming out with a new album. And we saw your video, and we saw you doing various songs and he's coming out with Duets, and we wanted to know if you could fly around the country and sing the songs on Duets. It would be just you; you're going to be promoting the CD.' It was a big deal. And that's how I ended up getting to perform Celine Dion's 32nd birthday party.”

Kelly said there’s no one he can't impersonate.

"I have that voice that I can basically do anything,” Kelly said. “You can look on my YouTube channel. You can go there and see me do Nat King Cole. You can see me do Ray Charles. You can see me do Rod Stewart. You can see me do Buddy Holly. All of those different voices. When I was living in the Jersey Shore I used to fly to Vegas, Atlantic City. I used to work a lot in Atlantic City, doing Sinatra stuff. That was very lucrative for me. I made good money. Some gigs I did with an orchestra. And there was Casino Magic in Biloxi, Mississippi."

Kelly originally wrote Brutal Harmony as a screenplay titled Jersey Sure Exit 82.

“We got to perform it,” Kelly said. "When I was living in New Jersey, I got to meet some actors. I got to meet the fellow that played Tony Soprano. I got to meet Vinnie Pastore. Nick Puccio, who now lives here in Naples. I got to go on the set of The Sopranos. So, I wrote a book about a guy from South Boston that's a kid and his father is in the Navy, and he gets transferred all the way to a naval base in New Jersey. It's like a Whitey Bulger story. He's a tough kid. All these kids adored him. They’d follow him, but then he ends up heading down to Jersey. He ends up stealing one too many cars, and he gets caught. He's wearing a Red Sox hat in court. And the judge has a bobblehead of Mickey Mantle. He gets sent to juvie. This kind of heavyset Italian kid is his bunkmate named Carmine. The guy that played Carmine was Monte Salvado, Jr. He was with Al Pacino in Carlito's Way.”

Kelly expects Brutal Harmony to be well received.

"I think they'll like it because The Sopranos hasn't been around for a while,” Kelly said. "And it's New Jersey. The reason why I brought in the Boston thing is because you've had this movie, Mystic River. 

I think bringing the Boston-type gangster into the New Jersey thing is good because whenever somebody is making a movie about gangsters, it seems like it's coming out of Boston."

Brutal Harmony is available on Amazon.com.