Thirteen years after he closed the doors of Chess Records, Ralph Bass still camps out in an office on South Michigan Avenue. A gaunt, sprightly figure, 80 years old as of May 1, Bass helps his wife run the Sammy Dyer School of the Theatre. And for ten years he’s been working on a book, the first draft of which is at a publisher. He’s calling it “I Didn’t Give a Damn if Whites Bought It.”
RB: You’re thinking what everybody else thinks about when they talk to me.
AL: You didn’t grow up in Chicago, did you?
In my spare time and vacation time [in the 30s] I used to play in society bands in New York City. We used to play in hotels and we weren’t allowed to mingle. I played violin and one time I said to this other violin player, Dusty, I said, “Dusty, let’s go to Harlem.” In those days, Harlem was like 100 miles away. I said, “Let’s go to a club or let’s go to a ballroom,” because blacks weren’t allowed in clubs. I said, “Let’s go to a ballroom where there are black bands playing for blacks and listen to real black music.” So, we went to the Savoy Ballroom.
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RB: People couldn’t get bands because most of the musicians were in the armed services, so I said, “Hey, why don’t we play recorded music?” So I went out and bought a PA system and started playing records. I said, “Damn, I can make better records than that.” So, I started writing letters. I got a copy of Billboard and I wrote to all the record companies. One was Black & White records in Cleveland, Ohio, and they were moving to LA and I made arrangements to visit. I went to the black union and I said, “Can you give me a list of all the good black musicians in town?” And they did and there was a guy named Sammy Franklin, and he was very popular and he did a version of “The Honeydripper” and I heard it in the hall.
So, the guy from Black & White came to town and he said, “What would you record if I gave you the job?” I said, “The Honeydripper.” It had been put out by a company that was just starting and he’d been in the record industry and he said, “Wow. You know what you’re doing. You’ve got a gig.”
AL: How did that come about?
