He was born in Columbia, South Carolina to Nathan and Esther (Cohen) Bass in 1934 and grew up in the town of North as the youngest of seven children.

[1] Bass served in the U.S. Navy, attending officer's candidate school in Newport, Rhode Island.

When he resigned from the Navy, he and his family moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where he began his work as a professional journalist.

He worked at The News and Courier (Charleston), a co-owned weekly paper, The West Ashley Journal, and The State (Columbia).

[2] From 1966 to 1973 Bass worked as the Columbia Bureau Chief for The Charlotte Observer as well as a part-time lecturer for journalism at the University of South Carolina.