Taco

In 1982 Taco secured his sole appearance on the pop charts via a cover faithful to Irving Berlin’s standard “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” Born Taco Ockerse in Jakarta, Indonesia, on July 21, 1955, he tracked the song in Germany in 1981; twelve months later it climbed the upper tiers of the U.S. pop listings, backed by a video that presented the artist in a bow-tie-and-tails outfit modeled on the Depression-era movie musicals that defined his visual approach, a look first made famous by Fred Astaire. His opening album, After Eight, mixed further reworkings of 1930s material with new songs cut in the same style, yet audience interest remained narrow, so the 1984 follow-up Let’s Face the Music marked his last chart entry before he vanished from the rankings altogether.