“Linda” was written for her while she was a little girl. Her father, Lee Eastman, was one of the top show-business lawyers in the country and in 1946 a client named Jack Lawrence--a song-writer--owed him some legal fees. Eastman suggested an easy way for Lawrence to pay his bill--write a song dedicated to his five-year-old daughter. The tune would be published through an Eastman-controlled company, and the royalties would offset Lawrence’s debt. It was a good deal all around, and Lawrence wrote “Linda” as his part of the bargain. Lawrence’s song took off like a rocket. That year alone, it was a Top 10 record twice, for Charlie Spivak and for Ray Noble’s Orchestra (with Buddy Clark crooning).

Linda was too young to know that she was “sort of famous” when the song was first released. But when Jan and Dean remade it in 1963, sixteen years later, she was twenty-one. Their version reached the national Top 30. The album on which it was included was entitled Jan and Dean Take Linda Surfing.