Taco Ockerse’s 1983 ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz’ Is Going Viral Again—Here’s What Happened to the Quirky One-Hit Wonder
He topped the charts with his cover of the '30s classic in 1983 and over 40 years later, he's winning over new fans
The ’80s were a great time for one-hit wonders, as the advent of MTV yielded countless flash-in-the-pan chart-toppers complete with visually striking videos and catchy, synthesizer-driven sounds. One of the quirkier songs to fall into this category was Taco’s “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” a new wave rendition of the classic 1930 Irving Berlin song that spent 21 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 4 in 1983.
Over 40 years after the cover introduced “Puttin’ on the Ritz” to a new generation, younger listeners are once again discovering the song, albeit through TikTok rather than MTV—and the artist is loving it! Read on to learn about the Ritz resurgence and what Taco has been up to in recent years.
From Golden Age musicals to ’80s chart-topper: The story of ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz’
Taco Ockerse (yep, Taco is his real name, and Taco was a solo act rather than a band!) was born in Indonesia in 1955 and had an international upbringing, settling in Germany. In the ’70s, he began acting in German theatrical productions of West Side Story, Chicago and other musicals, and he formed a short-lived band, Taco’s Bizz, in 1979. He then decided to try making it as a solo act and scored his first record deal in his home country in 1981.
Taco’s debut album, After Eight, which featured his version of “Puttin’ on the Ritz” (as well as covers of other standards like “Singin’ in the Rain” and “Cheek to Cheek”) was released in the US in 1982. The song began to receive steady airplay on the radio and MTV, culminating in it topping the charts in the US and around the world in 1983. At the time, Irving Berlin (who died in 1989) was 95, making him the oldest-ever songwriter to have a top 10 hit.
In the ’30s and ’40s, “Puttin’ on the Ritz” was performed by icons like Clark Gable and Fred Astaire, and the song became synonymous with Astaire’s Old Hollywood charm and elegant dance moves. Before Taco’s version, the song had a resurgence when it was performed to great comedic effect by Gene Wilder (as Dr. Frederick Frankenstein) and Peter Boyle (as Frankenstein’s Monster) in the 1974 Mel Brooks film Young Frankenstein.
Looking back on how he initially decided to record his unlikely hit, Taco recalled, “I had just seen the movie That’s Entertainment, where I saw the clip of Clark Gable singing ‘Puttin’ On The Ritz.’ That is the only song Clark ever sang in a movie. I thought it was a cool song and at that time, new wave music was just starting. I thought if we could combine the American songbook with those electronic sounds, that would be really cool, because nobody had done that before.”
Taco played up the classic Hollywood style in his “Puttin’ on the Ritz” music video, swanning around in a tuxedo and pulling faces while wearing stage makeup. The original video ended up generating controversy, as it included images of dancers in blackface in a misguided homage to a trope that was found in some ’30s-era musicals, and was an unfortunate relic of the period’s racism. The offending footage was later removed when the video was uploaded on YouTube.
The surprising ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz’ resurgence
95 years after “Puttin’ on the Ritz” first charmed listeners, Taco’s ’80s cover has gotten an unexpected second life as the latest trending audio track on TikTok, and the once-forgotten new wave song has been shared widely by new Gen-Z fans fascinated by its distinctly bizarre vibe, with many of them pointing out his resemblance to Tim Curry in The Rocky Horror Picture Show and praising the song’s earworm quality.
Taco, now 70, has been in on the revival, sharing videos responding to fans and reacting to the song’s virality. On YouTube, he can regularly be found liking and engaging with fan comments on the “Puttin’ on the Ritz” music video.
What Taco has been up to since ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz’
After the success of “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” Taco released his sophomore album, Let’s Face the Music (1984). When the album failed to find a wide audience in the US, he shifted his focus to the German market and released his next albums, Swing Classics: In the Mood of Glenn Miller (1985), Tell Me That You Like It (1986) and Taco (1987) in that country only. In the late ’80s, he shifted away from his signature old-fashioned style to dabble in contemporary dance music, and he could occasionally be seen acting in German TV shows during the ’90s.
Taco hasn’t made a new album since 1987, though he’s released a number of compilations and recorded alternative versions of “Puttin’ on the Ritz” over the years, as well as releasing new German singles, and he continues to tour internationally.
In an interview with the blog Rediscover the ’80s, Taco said, “Today ‘Ritz’ is like a past lover, one that always lingers on your mind and makes you feel young again,” and explained that he didn’t have continued success in the US because, “It has a lot to do with record company politics. I was signed to a publishing company and not to RCA directly at that time. And to prolong a continuous career in the States would have meant moving and living in America, which I was not willing to do back then.”
Taco is excited to have a new audience of fans who weren’t even born when “Puttin’ on the Ritz” came out, and said, “I love everybody listening to all my music and passing it on to a whole new generation. It’s very heartwarming and it gives me the feeling that I did something right in my life.” It doesn’t get more ritzy than that.
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