I have to admit friends, the post I made on Tuesday about Pickwick’s “Hacienda Motel” still baffles me. I had no idea that all the years I had been belting out the racy lyrics of that song, I was actually singing about the legendary Sam Cooke’s uncharacteristically shameful death. Immediately after the post I turned to one of my fellow music aficionados to tell him about this stunning finding. We coincidentally had been to the flea market earlier in the week and he had purchased a Sam Cooke original pressing vinyl record, so I thought he’d be just stunned by the discovery. As a Sam Cooke fan and enthusiast, he was already informed of the detestable fashion in which Cooke died and he actually filled me in on more details that further opened my eyes to the musical tributes Sam Cooke has sparked over the years. Apparently Cooke was shot when the hooker he hired tried to rob him within the Hacienda Motel, thus causing a struggle in Cooke’s drunken state. My friend then blew my mind when he told me “In the Hacienda Hotel, his last words were supposedly, ‘LADY, YOU SHOT ME!’…sound familiar?” I couldn’t believe my ears as the connection was immediately made with the song in today’s post, Har Mar Superstar’s brass-filled passionate soul jam “Lady You Shot Me”.

Guys like Har Mar Superstar are the whole reason that shows like “The Voice” exist. No one would expect such a big voice in a a small, round, and bald man. If anything, a guy like that would expectedly fall victim to some sort of Milli Vanilli lip syncing stunt double to promote a more attractive fabricated performance rather than an unattractively talented no-name. But that doesn’t stop Har Mar Superstar’s Sean Tillman. Go ahead and Google “Har Mar Superstar” and you’ll be taken back by the copious amounts of pictures that Tillman is comically posing like a supermodel in nothing but his underwear. That same vigor is displayed in the music video”Lady You Shot Me”as Tillman dips and dances with the microphone stand like its a long lost lover and drops to the floor multiple times in a natural display of showmanship. Animated confidence is key as a loud and proud soul-man, and Tillman’s got it. If you can learn anything from this man, it’s simply to embrace the diva, no matter what’s presumably holding you back.