Tarrytown Singer Pays Tribute to WWII Era with New Album

Just in time for holiday gift-giving and that nostalgia for bygone eras that also comes with the season, Tarrytown’s Melinda Pope DeRocker is soon releasing a CD of cover songs from The Great American Songbook, circa WWII.

The album is personal for her, paying homage to her parents. DeRocker’s mother died last year; her father, 91, served two years in the South Pacific during the Second World War, "a remarkable time in American history," she writes.

In her own words, here’s the introduction to the album and it’s playlist from Melinda Pope DeRocker:

In February, 1944, at the height of World War II, a 21-year-old woman from Newton, Mississippi boarded a train destined for New York City. Her fiance was in naval officer’s training school at Columbia University, and had just learned he would soon be shipped out to the South Pacific. Denied leave for the Southern wedding they had planned, they exchanged vows at Manhattan’s Riverside Church, number 38 in a procession of 54 other Navy couples that same afternoon. Shortly after their honeymoon in Times Square, he bid her farewell and sailed to New Caledonia. They would not see each other again for the better part of two years.

Those two people were my parents. The songs on this album were the musical backdrop for their story along with countless others in that remarkable time in American history. And although by the time I was born the songs had dropped off the popular charts, my parents kept them alive, introducing them to me as a teenager while my mom played piano, I sang and we all danced to the music of the big bands that were still around.

Another love affair had begun—between me and the songs of the Great American Songbook.

Songs include:

• Time After Time
• Embraceable You
• That Old Feeling
• The Nearness of You
• I'll Be Seeing You
• You're the Cream in My Coffee
• Day by Day
• I've Got You Under My Skin
• Love is Here to Stay
• It Had to Be You
• 'S Wonderful
• I've Got a Crush on You
• The Way You Look Tonight

If you're interested in getting a copy for yourself, her husband is taking pre-orders right now (email: Rob@RobDeRocker.com) but beginning Dec. 1 (the release date), folks can go to her music page on Facebook for digital download with CDBaby,  iTunes, and Amazon, and for hard copies through a link to PayPal that they are processing from home. Her page is: www.facebook.com/melindaderockermusic.