Bass was a Chicago artist who began his pin-up career working for the Louis F. Dow Company in St. Paul during the mid to late 1930s. His painting style is often compared to that of Elvgren, Buell, and  Ballantyne. Bass created his own pin-ups for Brown & Bigelow, before he was employed by the Dow Company as a 'paint-over' artist, commissioned to redo the work that Gil Elvgren had previously created for the company.