Puttin' on the Ritz - Mel Tormé - MP3 instrumental karaoke

Originally written by the renowned Belarusian American songwriter Irving Berlin – who practically wrote the Great American Songbook – "Puttin' on the Ritz" was, according to The Complete Lyrics of Irving Berlin, the first song to be sung by an interracial ensemble on film. "The Christmas Song" composer Melvin Howard Tormé aka Mel Tormé, also nicknamed "The Velvet Fog," found an affinity with this song about dressing fashionably ("puttin' on the Ritz") and recorded his own jazzy version in 1962 for his album Comin' Home Baby. Twenty years after Mel Tormé had turned the song into his own, Indonesian-Dutch singer and entertainer Taco released a synth-pop cover version of "Puttin' On the Ritz" as a single from his album After Eight, released in Europe on Polydor and by RCA in the US. However, the single was accompanied by a music video that contained characters in blackface and has subsequently been banned from many television networks.