Taco scored his one and only pop hit in 1982 with a faithful rendition of the Irving Berlin chestnut “Puttin’ on the Ritz.”
Born Taco Ockerse in Jakarta, Indonesia 1955, he recorded “Ritz” in Germany in 1981; a year later, the song (originally popularized by Fred Astaire) hit the upper reaches of the US pop charts, accompanied by a video depicting the singer decked out in a bow-tie-and-tails ensemble emblematic of the Depression-era movie musicals his image strived to emulate.
Taco’s debut LP, After Eight, contained other recreations of 1930s hits, as well as original material in the same vein; however, the market for such stuff was clearly limited, and after a 1984 follow-up, Let’s Face the Music, he disappeared from the charts for good.
