Who else just realized Dee Dee Belson was Pearl Bailey's daughter and wanted to hear a clip of her singing?

Linda's vibrato and control...AMAZING!!! 🥰

You can see how Linda sang effortlessly yet very comfortable you can see the happiness in her facial expression and emotions. The gradual change from falsetto to natural voice is magnificent at 2:05!

Magical performance by Ms. Eder! RIP Ms. Belson!

Linda Eder incredible then... and still is!

Linda so deserved this accolade!👍🏻❣️

There's a clip of Linda Eder singing this song at a CD signing event held a few years back. Head over and watch it if you haven't. It's incredible with lots of variations that weren't there in the Star Search renditions. If Star Search is amazing for how incredible Linda already was, performances like the one I mentioned are unbelievable for how amazing she still is after all these years. Simply hasn't lost a thing, at all, and in fact has developed her craft with the benefit of experience.

A friend exposed me to Linda probably 15 yrs ago... Look at how effortlessly she is singing through such difficult passages of the song!

Love Linda Eder, never knew she was on this!

Dee Dee is Louie Bellson and Pearl Bailey's daughter...gorgeous.

One of the greatest voices of ALL TIME! I sat 10 feet from her in a very intimate setting when she was just starting out. I couldn't believe any person could be that beautiful and that talented. It just didn't seem fair to us normal people, but I loved her and still do. dp

Wow, they are both BEAUTIFUL and very TALENTED.

Linda saw you last night in white plains NY so wonderful

What a voice!!! At 1:17 through 1:37...! o.m.G!! And then: 1:48 through 2:16! Amazing.

Linda Eder had more control of the song and didn’t over sing. Correct choice. RIP Dede

both beautiful women with amazing voices, but based on this clip... I can see how Linda won!

Linda is phenomenal. I adore her. My idol.

Both ladies were excellent, but Linda's voice was more pure and natural, whereas Deedee did a lot of screaming in her vocal, although it was great. I think that the judges chose Linda due to her pure natural voice.

I LIKED LINDA .

Linda, an amazing tone and a lot of character with her vibrato and amazing power. She sounds like a Streisand. Dee Dee doesn't sound as crystal clear and her tone not as pleasant. She sounds more forced and tiny on her belts. Yes she belted high, but what else?

Dee Dee was Pearl Bailey daughter

Is that a C7#11 at :50? I saw Linda with the legend Michael Feinstein a few years ago, what a meomarble performance they did.

Huge, huge fan of Linda Eder the singer. And having received a voice lesson from her last year, I know that she is also an incredible voice teacher and I will always be in debt to her for what she taught me. That said (and I haven't even heard anything else by Dee Dee Belson), I think some of the comments are a little harsh to Dee Dee. There's nothing wrong with her singing. It's just a more out of the box and adventurous approach with some wonderful scat in the end too. Maybe just too much so for Star Search... I would say the difference was mainly that Linda intuited that a platform like Star Search would look for more mainstream and accessible singing and stuck to that while still brilliantly accommodating a whistle (?) note that isn't there in the original. She made the song her own without sounding like she had to try too hard to do so and that probably impressed the judges vis a vis Dee Dee.

Dee Dee is absolutely beautiful, but it's like the scene outta, "I'm gonna get u sucka" when his sister was singing at the bar...

No comparison Linda is the best.

she died very young

Linda was only 26 then but they made her look like she’s in her 40s Wow!

I liked Dee Dee’s jazzy vibe initially, but then I got lost and couldn’t hear any words. If she had continued as she had started, she could have probably won.

DeeDee !

Sorry for Dee Dee's loss. But, Linda's win supports the idea that despite having famous musical parents, one can't win without immense talent. Dee Dee was the daughter of Pearl Bailey and Louie Bellson.

I'm pretty sure Dee Dee Bellson is Pearl Bailey's daughter.

I LIKED DEE DEE

two amazing talents, but I love Miss L. However, who dressed them? An Amish designer? They were covered up to here.

If the World Basketball Sports has Kobe Bryant+Michael Jordan+Stephen Curry; so does Chess World has Robert James Fischer+Garry Kasparov; the Mathematical Science does with GF Bernhard Riemann+Isaac Newton+James Clerk Maxwell+Leonhard Euler+Carl Friedrich Gauss+”Albert Einstein w/Mileva Marity Maric”; and so does the World of Music expressed in so powerful yet artistically angelic voice too deeply subtle and mathematically balanced in the rare perfection of sound which energy, frequency & resonance are most creatively at play in an orchestra-like integration of form, harmony, melody, rhythm of rarefied singing that dances as it speaks of TRUTH, BEAUTY & GOODNESS of her humanity; yes she does so majestically a genius of a compleat voice that has the power to captivate every heart of man to act w/ peace & unity towards all. She is arguably a most under-rated Best Singer-Female Vocalist in the “World of Music Industry” that sadly each known Female Category Vocalist Music Award like “this & that ‘Musical Award’ ” misses her nomination(s) beyond doubt. That is, her nomination alone puts justice to her rarefied multi-dimensional voice of perfect quality yet equated to add INTEGRITY, HONOUR, and RESPECT to such established World Musical Performing Artist Awards, like the Grammy Award, American Music Award, American Cinema Award, and the like, to include “Presidential Medal of Freedom; or, The Congressional Gold Medal” of USA. She deserves whichever it is awarded to her: a True American Woman in blood & personality embracing the True Ideals of a True American Citizen before all humanity. Yes, she humbly stands out the BEST with her GOD-Gifted Voice of a Genius Musicality. Yes, non-arguably she is one of the BEST Female Vocalists, one among the World’s Top 10 Best Female Artists, 1among Winning Champion Vocalists we are fortunate to witness on Earth. Today, she is as consistently highly talented vocalist as since then back in her competing time of Winning Dimensional Voice so much as until Today’s now she remains 1 of the World Best Female CHAMPION Vocalist(s). She is LINDA EDER.

Sorry Dee Dee but screaming is not singing. It was TOO much

Adopted daughter of Pearl Bailey. RIP.

I liked Dee Dee's performance better.

I used to watch Star Search every week, and yet I completely forgot that annoying, horrible slide up the scale that some singers did (Dee Dee did it twice) in a bid to impress. It's not impossible to do a slide like that and sound wonderful, but you have to have a lot of control and power, and Dee Dee doesn't. She doesn't sound like she's feeling the song, she sounds like she's throwing everything but the kitchen sink at the judges and the audience, and it's a shame, because you can tell that no matter how hard she tries to hide it with gimmicks and crap, she actually has a great voice.

Dee Dee wins in my book