Return to Rock-and-Roll Page.Brian Hyland met with success as a teenage singer in the early 60's and kept coming back over the ensuing decade with a number of top forty records on different record labels.
He was born in the Queens borough of New York City in 1943. Brian formed his own band, the Delphis, when he was twelve years old. As a sixteen-year-old high school sophomore, he recorded a novelty song on the Leader label that had been written by Paul Vance and Lee Pockriss titled Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini. The song was picked up by the Kapp label and became a huge hit in the summer of 1960, going all the way to number one on the charts. Brian Hyland was suddenly a star.
His follow-up Lopsided, Overloaded, And It Wiggled When I Rode It did not do as well. He changed to the ABC label and had some hits there over the next two years or so, including Let Me Belong To You, Ginny Come Lately, and a song that would later be covered by Dave Edmunds titled Warmed Over Kisses (Left Over Love). Hyland's biggest hit of this period was Sealed With A Kiss, a top ten entry in 1962.
The hits stopped coming for a while, but Brian was back in 1966, this time on Philips. His next hit was The Joker Went Wild, a song that did quite well in the midst of the British Invasion. Brian's work with West Coast record producer Snuff Garrett resulted in another hit, Run, Run, Look and See.
By the late 60's pop singer Del Shannon was working as a record producer, recording groups such as Smith, and he took an interest in his friend Brian Hyland's career. They nearly got together in 1968 and finally in 1970 collaborated on a cover of a song that had been a hit for Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions in the early 60's titled Gypsy Woman, with Shannon and Max Crook performing on it. The song was released on the Uni label and reached number three in the Fall of 1970; it was Brian Hyland's final top forty record.
Hyland also recorded an album on Uni under the direction of Del Shannon, and he recorded a cover of Jackie Wilson's Lonely Teardrops. In 1975 Sealed With A Kiss was reissued in Great Britain and became a top ten hit there.
Brian Hyland left a number of hit songs in his trek through the 60's and early 70's. The one he is most often associated with by many is his first and biggest hit, Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini.
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