So she set out to find a record company that wanted to record the project, and Decca Records stepped up to the plate. Producer Ron Mounsey (Aretha Franklin, Paul Simon, Tony Bennett) was brought on to helm the project and they decided to record it the old-fashioned way -- live. They brought in an orchestra of 40 players to the studio, set up a microphone for [Deborah Cox] and recorded with everyone in one room. "It was the most amazing and exhilarating experience," she says. "I had to keep focused as all these great musicians were playing around me. I was a bit nervous, because it's like dominoes: if one person falls, we all do. I think everyone should record like that at least once in their life."

"Destination Moon is a labour of love," Cox told me on the phone last week. "I remember hearing [Dinah Washington] sing This Bitter Earth for the first time when I was eight or nine when my mom played a 45 at home, and I just gravitated to her voice."