Abstract This brief aperçu recalls some keynote studies on the Grés d'Annot in the French Maritime Alps that paved the way for my involvement with these rocks in the late 1950s. At that time, the topic of gravitative flows was gaining momentum, and various theories on underwater avalanches, including turbidity currents capable of carrying coarse sand to the deep sea, had already been proposed. However, these transport processes still needed considerable clarification. Discoveries, including the identification of the sandstones as turbidites by Faure-Muret and others in 1956, were not conceived in a vacuum, but rested on many years of previous research by numerous geologists. Some of the key earlier findings are cited here. My interests then, and for several decades afterward, were focused on the broader context of sedimentary petrology, downslope-to-deep marine deposition, palaeogeography and regional structural geology pertaining to these spectacular Tertiary sequences. Now that more than 40 years have passed, I look back and can better appreciate the role of others and their influence serving as a base for my modest effort. The ‘cutting of teeth’ experiences on the Grés d'Annot were truly fortunate, not only for my early formation as a sedimentologist, but also as I have continued to pursue related and progressively more diverse activities.