A wonderful one minute and fifty-seven seconds of old-school doo-wop.
Randy and the Rainbows were from the borough of Queens in New York City and featured two pairs of brothers, Dominic (nicknamed Randy) and Frank Safuto and Mike and Sal Zero. "Denise" was their first single; it reached #10 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The group continued to release singles through 1967 without further success. They eventually split into two groups with the same name, one led by the Safuto brothers and the other by Mike Zero.
"Denise" was covered by Blondie in 1978, who renamed the song "Denis" and improvised some lyrics in French. This was their first European hit, reaching #2 in the UK and #1 in the Netherlands but not charting in North America. (Their first North American hit was "Heart of Glass" in 1979.)
Created January 29, 2026.