The very first French rock band to introduce R & R in France in 1960, Les Chaussettes Noires were first a band with a singer, Eddy Mitchell up to 1962. Then Eddy was drafted in the army and the ties between eddy and the band became looser, before definitely breaking up in 1963.
Already in 1962 Eddy cut a record backed by a big orchestra, and Les Chaussettes Noires played their first instrumental tunes on an LP comment réussir en amour, which was the the theme of a movie of the same name. In this film they backed Eddy and played two good instrumental pieces : parce que tu sais and Golf Drouot.
The line up in 1963 was : William Benaïm on lead, his brother Paul on rythm, (he replaced Tony d’Arpa), Aldo Martinez on bass, and Gilbert Bastellica on drums who replaced Jean Pierre, as well as Michel Gaucher on sax who replaced Mick Picard.
In 1964, les Chaussettes Noires made their way alone and recorded two EPS with some vocals like Oh dis Eddie and some good instrumental like their cover of Misirlou, the surf classic.
Anyway the two records did make very good sales, even if they underlined the big progress made by those rock pioneers. They left us some good instrumental cuts, one of them is maybe “Parce que tu sais”.
Jean BACHELERIE