Bass was born in the Bronx to an Italian Catholic father, Ralph Bass, né Basso, and a German-American Jewish mother, Lena, née Brettner, who raised all of their children within a kosher household in the religious faith of Judaism. As a young boy, Ralph displayed a gift for music and his mother enrolled him in lessons, for which he became a very accomplished classical violinist. However, raised within a diverse enclave in the Bronx, Ralph was exposed to a number of cultural nuances which influenced his choice of musical genres from classical to Blues and Jazz. From an early age, Ralph wanted to not simply perform, but assemble sounds that he enjoyed listening to. After his marriage to his first wife, Alice née Robbins, Ralph found opportunities in Los Angeles and relocated. He moved his young family of four with him. During Ralph's venture into the record industry he began to travel to the Mississippi Delta and other southern states where he heard some of the best music was being played. It was there he discovered some of the greatest commercially untapped music in the industry and his niche as a record producer and talent scout. Here-to-fore Jim Crow laws kept African-American performers marginalized, with many relegated to one-night stands performing only to all-black audiences in a network of theaters and nightclubs known as the Chitlin' Circuit. Bass decided to focus his career on bringing African-American music and African-American performers into the entertainment mainstream.
Career
Bass got his start in the 1940s as an A&R man at Black & White Records, where he produced and recorded, among others, Lena Horne, Roosevelt Sykes, Jack McVea and T-Bone Walker. From there he went on to help build two of the most successful independent record labels, Savoy Records, in New Jersey, and King Records, in Cincinnati, Ohio. During this period, Bass toured the South with various blues bands and noted the large size of the audiences, still predominantly black but with an increasing numbers of whites. He sensed that the audience was changing. At Savoy from 1948 to 1951, he recorded Brownie McGhee and Johnny Otis. At Federal Records, a subsidiary of King run by Bass, he turned out a series of R&B hits, including the Dominoes' "Sixty Minute Man" and "Have Mercy Baby" and Hank Ballard's "Work With Me, Annie". King's founder, Syd Nathan, at first refused to sign James Brown to record "Please, Please, Please", because he thought poorly of the demo; Bass signed Brown to Federal and produced "Please, Please, Please", the first Federal single, which was a regional hit and eventually sold a million copies. Bass also produced the original version of the R&B standard "Kansas City", recorded by Little Willie Littlefield. In 1959, the Chess brothers hired Bass away from King to serve as A&R director for Chess Records. He worked for Chess until 1976, producing recordings by blues, gospel, R&B, and rock-and-roll artists, including Clara Ward, the Soul Stirrers, Etta James, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, and Sonny Boy Williamson. He composed the music for Pigmeat Markham's hit novelty single "Here Comes the Judge". Later, for MCA Records, he produced recordings by John Lee Hooker.
Filmography
In the 2014 filmGet On Up, a biography of James Brown produced by Bryan Grazer and Mick Jagger, Bass is portrayed by Josh Hopkins.
