Ralph Basso Jr. (May 1, 1911 – March 5, 1997), known as Ralph Bass,The birth surname of Ralph Bass's paternal grandfather, who was born in Italy, was DuBasso. was an American

rhythm-and-blues Rhythm and blues, frequently abbreviated as R&B or R'n'B, is a genre of popular music that originated in African-American communities in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly ...

record producer and

talent scout In professional sports, scouts are experienced talent evaluators who travel extensively for the purposes of watching athletes play their chosen sports and determining whether their set of skills and talents represent what is needed by the scou ...

for several independent

labels A label (as distinct from signage) is a piece of paper, plastic film, cloth, metal, or other material affixed to a container or product, on which is written or printed information or symbols about the product or item. Information printed d ...

. He was a pioneer in bringing African American music into the American mainstream. During his career he worked in key roles for Black & White Records,

Savoy Records Savoy Records is an American record company and label established by Herman Lubinsky in 1942 in Newark, New Jersey. Savoy specialized in jazz, rhythm and blues, and gospel music. In September 2017, Savoy was acquired by Concord Bicycle Music. ...

, King Records, Federal Records, and

Chess Records Chess Records was an American record company established in 1950 in Chicago, specializing in blues and rhythm and blues. It was the successor to Aristocrat Records, founded in 1947. It expanded into soul music, gospel music, early rock a ...

, recording many leading performers, including

Etta James Jamesetta Hawkins (January 25, 1938 – January 20, 2012), known professionally as Etta James, was an American singer who performed in various genres, including gospel, blues, jazz, R&B, rock and roll, and soul. Starting her career in 1954, sh ...

Sam Cooke Samuel Cook (January 22, 1931 – December 11, 1964), known professionally as Sam Cooke, was an American singer and songwriter. Considered to be a pioneer and one of the most influential soul music, soul artists of all time, Cooke is common ...

James Brown James Joseph Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) was an American singer, dancer, musician, record producer and bandleader. The central progenitor of funk music and a major figure of 20th century music, he is often referred to by the hono ...

Earl Bostic Eugene Earl Bostic (April 25, 1913 – October 28, 1965) was an American alto saxophonist. Bostic's recording career was diverse, his musical output encompassing jazz, swing, jump blues and the post-war American rhythm and blues style, which he ...

, and groups such as the Platters and the

Dominoes Dominoes is a family of tile-based games played with gaming pieces, commonly known as dominoes. Each domino is a rectangular tile, usually with a line dividing its face into two square ''ends''. Each end is marked with a number of spots (also c ...

. Bass was inducted into the

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF), sometimes simply referred to as the Rock Hall, is a museum and hall of fame located in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States, on the shore of Lake Erie. The museum documents the history of rock music and ...

in 1991 as a nonperformer.

Personal life

Bass was born in the

Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

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 an 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, Bass wanted to not simply perform, but assemble sounds that he enjoyed listening to. After his marriage to his first wife, Alice née Robbins, Bass 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 a source of unrecorded musicians and his niche as a record producer and talent scout. Here-to-fore

Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the S ...

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 The Chitlin' Circuit was a collection of performance venues throughout the eastern, southern, and upper Midwest areas of the United States that provided commercial and cultural acceptance for African American musicians, comedians, and other enterta ...

. After his second marriage to Shirley Hall Bass on December 17, 1960 Bass decided to focus his career on bringing African American music and African American performers into the entertainment mainstream.

Career

Bass became an A&R man in the 1940s at Black & White Records, where he produced and recorded, among others,

Lena Horne Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was an American dancer, actress, singer, and civil rights activist. Horne's career spanned more than seventy years, appearing in film, television, and theatre. Horne joined the chorus of th ...

Roosevelt Sykes Roosevelt Sykes (January 31, 1906July 17, 1983) was an American blues musician, also known as "the Honeydripper". Career Sykes was born the son of a musician in Elmar, Arkansas. "Just a little old sawmill town", Sykes said of his birthplace. The ...

Jack McVea John Vivian McVea (November 5, 1914 – December 27, 2000) was an American swing, blues, and rhythm and blues woodwind player and bandleader. He played clarinet and tenor and baritone saxophone. Career Born in Los Angeles, California, his fat ...

(Bass suggested he record " Open the Door, Richard", which became a hit) and

T-Bone Walker Aaron Thibeaux "T-Bone" Walker (May 28, 1910 – March 16, 1975) was an American blues musician, composer, songwriter and bandleader, who was a pioneer and innovator of the jump blues, West Coast blues, and electric blues sounds. In 2018 ''R ...

(including Walker's landmark " Call It Stormy Monday"). From there he went on to help build two of the most successful independent record labels,

, 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 Walter Brown "Brownie" McGhee (November 30, 1915 – February 16, 1996) was an American folk music and Piedmont blues singer and guitarist, best known for his collaboration with the harmonica player Sonny Terry. Life and career McGhee was ...

and

Johnny Otis Johnny Otis (born Ioannis Alexandres Veliotes; December 28, 1921 – January 17, 2012) was an American singer, musician, composer, bandleader, record producer, and talent scout. He was a seminal influence on American R&B and rock and roll. He ...

. At Federal Records, a subsidiary of King run by Bass, he turned out a series of R&B hits, including the

' " Sixty Minute Man" and " Have Mercy Baby" and

Hank Ballard Hank Ballard (born John Henry Kendricks; November 18, 1927 – March 2, 2003) was an American singer and songwriter, the lead vocalist of The Midnighters and one of the first rock and roll artists to emerge in the early 1950s. He played an inte ...

's " Work With Me, Annie". King's founder, Syd Nathan, at first refused to sign

to record "

Please, Please, Please "Please, Please, Please" is a rhythm and blues song performed by James Brown and the Famous Flames. Written by Brown and Johnny Terry and released as a single on Federal Records in 1956, it reached No. 6 on the R&B charts. The group's debut r ...

", 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 The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With and a population of more th ...

", recorded by Little Willie Littlefield. Bass 'discovered' John Lee, who had two

country blues Country blues (also folk blues, rural blues, backwoods blues, or downhome blues) is one of the earliest forms of blues music. The mainly solo vocal with acoustic fingerstyle guitar accompaniment developed in the rural Southern United States in t ...

singles released by Federal in 1952. In 1959, the Chess brothers hired Bass away from King to serve as A&R director for

. He worked for Chess until 1976, producing recordings by

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the ...

gospel Gospel originally meant the Christian message (" the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words a ...

, R&B, and rock-and-roll artists, including Clara Ward, the

Soul Stirrers The Soul Stirrers were an American gospel music group, whose career spans over eighty years. The group was a pioneer in the development of the quartet style of gospel, and a major influence on soul, doo wop, and Motown, some of the secular musi ...

Howlin' Wolf Chester Arthur Burnett (June 10, 1910January 10, 1976), better known by his stage name Howlin' Wolf, was an American blues singer and guitarist. He is regarded as one of the most influential blues musicians of all time. Over a four-decade care ...

Muddy Waters McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1913 April 30, 1983), known professionally as Muddy Waters, was an American blues singer and musician who was an important figure in the post- war blues scene, and is often cited as the "father of modern Chicag ...

, and Sonny Boy Williamson. He composed the music for

Pigmeat Markham Dewey "Pigmeat" Markham (April 18, 1904 – December 13, 1981) was an American entertainer. Though best known as a comedian, Markham was also a singer, dancer, and actor. His nickname came from a stage routine, in which he declared himself to be ...

's hit novelty single " Here Comes the Judge". Later, for

MCA Records MCA Records was an American record label owned by MCA Inc., which later became part of Universal Music Group. Pre-history MCA Inc., a powerful talent agency and a television production company, entered the recorded music business in 1962 w ...

, he produced recordings by

John Lee Hooker John Lee Hooker (August 22, 1912 or 1917 – June 21, 2001) was an American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. The son of a sharecropper, he rose to prominence performing an electric guitar-style adaptation of Delta blues. Hooker often in ...

. Image:PleasePleasePlease.jpg, "

, Federal Records Image:Chess Records Studio.jpg, Chess Records Studio, Chicago

Filmography

In the 2014 film '' Get On Up'', a biography of

produced by Bryan Grazer and

Mick Jagger Sir Michael Philip Jagger (born 26 July 1943) is an English singer and songwriter who has achieved international fame as the lead vocalist and one of the founder members of the rock band the Rolling Stones. His ongoing songwriting partnershi ...

, Bass is portrayed by

Josh Hopkins William Joshua Hopkins (born September 12, 1970) is an American actor. Some of his best known roles include Raymond Millbury on '' Ally McBeal'' (2001–2002), Grayson Ellis on '' Cougar Town'' (2009–2015), and Liam O'Connor on '' Quantico'' ( ...

Audio/visual

References

Notes Inline citations

External links

"Ralph Bass,"
'' Answers.com'' ()
"Ralph Bass' Junior Jazz"
''The Classic Jazz Guitar'' , Mike Kremer (webmaster)

an

Illinois House of Representatives The Illinois House of Representatives is the lower house of the Illinois General Assembly. The body was created by the first Illinois Constitution adopted in 1818. The House under the current constitution as amended in 1980 consists of 118 re ...

, 90th

General Assembly A general assembly or general meeting is a meeting of all the members of an organization or shareholders of a company. Specific examples of general assembly include: Churches * General Assembly (presbyterian church), the highest court of pres ...

(1997–1998)
"Toller Cranston's 'The Ice Show'"
''

Internet Broadway Database The Internet Broadway Database (IBDB) is an online database of Broadway theatre productions and their personnel. It was conceived and created by Karen Hauser in 1996 and is operated by the Research Department of The Broadway League, a trade asso ...

''
"Inside Beyonce's Private World"
(reference to Ralph Bass's granddaughter, Shauna Bass), ''

OK! ''OK!'' is a British weekly magazine that primarily specialises in royal and celebrity news. Originally launched as a monthly magazine, its first issue was published in April 1997. In September 2004, ''OK''! launched in Australia as a monthly ...

'', December 5, 2008 * {{DEFAULTSORT:Bass, Ralph 1911 births 1997 deaths People from the Bronx Record producers from New York (state) A&R people King Records artists 20th-century American businesspeople American people of German-Jewish descent American people of Italian descent