Nothing makes Sam Bass light up more than the name Dale Earnhardt.
Having worked with Earnhardt for 17 years before his untimely passing in February 2001, Bass got to know the seven-time champion as both a friend and client. Today, April 29, would have Earnhardt’s 65th birthday and like most days, Bass will think of him fondly.
After all, Earnhardt appointed him his official artist and it was both a job and relationship Bass never took for granted.
“I was always so aware of how lucky and fortunate I was,” Bass told POPULAR SPEED during a sit-down interview at his gallery, where he laid out some of his Earnhardt work. “I miss him so much. I miss the opportunity to work with him and get his feedback. Even if it wasn’t positive.”
It all began in the 1980s. Bass was doing projects for Wrangler, who was Earnhardt’s sponsor at the time. He designed a bumper sticker which featured a car rendering and portrait of Earnhardt. The company liked it so much they made it into the team’s hauler design. Bass met Earnhardt soon afterward, and things quickly developed to where he was doing work for Richard Childress Racing while forging a close bond with Earnhardt.
From artwork to paint schemes, logos, airplanes and a motor coach design, Bass has many fond memories of Earnhardt. Most of them make him laugh, but there are times the past seems to strikes him hard and he gets lost in the moment.
The Earnhardt Seal of Approval
One of the neatest paint schemes designs Bass said he did was the Wheaties Chevrolet in 1997. Earnhardt ran the car at Charlotte Motor Speedway in the All-Star Race.
It meant as much to Earnhardt to be featured on the box of cereal, as it did to Bass for being a part of it. Plus, it forever answered the question of whether racecar drivers are athletes. But one of the original designs Bass submitted, which had a picture of Earnhardt on the hood, was not the one that would make it to print.
“He said, ‘I’m intimidating enough coming up behind these guys, they don’t need to see my face on the car,’” said Bass with a laugh.
But that was Earnhardt, heavily involved in the final say of what his paint schemes and any other work was going to look like. His son, Dale Earnhardt Jr., does the same today.
“One of the highlights of my career was going to the local Food Lion and standing in the aisle of cereal and seeing all those boxes of Wheaties with my artwork on the front of it,” said Bass. “And to share it with Dale – it was all about him that was the reason I got my artwork on there. I knew he was really proud of it, and I was proud to be a part of it.
“It was overwhelming. I look back on that so fondly because of how much it meant to him.”
Bass encountered the same problem when he designed a logo for the Kannapolis Intimidators, the baseball team Earnhardt owned. It became known as the Earnhardt Face Ball, which everyone loved. Everyone except Earnhardt.
“He loved being the owner of the team, but he didn’t want to force his image on anyone. He was very modest and humble, and that was always so cool,” Bass said. “Me, I wanted to brand the team in his image. The day of the logo unveil we had a nice printout of the logo, but I also gave him the original artwork of the Face Ball and presented that to him.”
Every project Bass worked on made him a nervous wreck as he hoped he would do it right. Or, just hope he got it done at all. When Earnhardt bought a new motorhome, he called Bass to design the outside of it, but it needed to be done immediately. Back and forth they went through email, or with Earnhardt popping into the gallery when he had time during testing that day at Charlotte.
By the end of the day, Earnhardt had signed off on it. Then, he turned to his business manager …
“He goes, ‘That’s pretty amazing isn’t it? You call somebody up in the morning, and you got it all done by 5:00,’” Bass said. “That right there was what it was all about for me.
“The thing about Dale was, he would work you to death, but he knew what he wanted, and it was up to you to get it to him. It was just great because there was nothing like getting his seal of approval and to this day, that is what I miss more than anything in this sport because it was something you worked for, it was something you earned, and you felt so good when you got it.”
Family Ties
Even though Earnhardt Sr. has passed, Bass still has a relationship with the Earnhardt family. He’s designed paint schemes for Kerry Earnhardt, has presented paintings to Dale Earnhardt Jr. and is currently working projects with Kelley Earnhardt Miller.
But when the Earnhardt kids started racing, Bass was recruited to design their cars. The simple idea was to make them different from Dad, so Bass went with numbers that were slated backwards, instead of the forward slanting No. 3.
“Big mistake,” said Bass as he breaks out into another laugh. “I’ll never forget him looking at the drawings and kind of lowering his glasses down and just kind of staring at me going, ‘Why did you slate the numbers backwards?’ I said, well, I wanted to make it different than yours. It’s almost like the kids are blowing the door numbers off the car. They’re running so fast it’s leaning the numbers back.
“He stands up out of his chair, and he goes, ‘Let me ask you something. When you run do you run like this (leaning forward) or do run like that?’ I said the way you showed me. He goes, ‘All right, I don’t ever want to see numbers slanting backwards again.’ And that was priceless. That image is forever in my mind.”
In the late 1990s, NASCAR went international with an exhibition race in Japan. For the 1997 event, Earnhardt Sr. drove an ACDelco Chevrolet, designed by Bass. What made it even more special, however, was that a year later the scheme was passed down to Earnhardt Jr. when he began his Busch Series career in 1998 and 1999.
“That was just incredible because that was such a sense of honor to not only be doing something for Dale Earnhardt going to Japan, but that paint scheme evolved into Dale Jr.’s paint scheme. And he won those championships,” Bass said.
“If you look at the Sam Bass career, one of my top five moments was getting that car design that the father and then the son got to race. That meant a lot. That kind of segued into when (Earnhardt Jr.) went Cup racing I got to do his very first Cup car, the Budweiser car. I’ve been so blessed with the whole Earnhardt relationship that I am just so lucky. I’ve been able to know and work with all their family.”
Personal Property
The relationship between Bass and Earnhardt went further than work.
Eventually, Bass began to outgrow his studio in Concord and knew he needed another place to set up shop. One morning when radio personality Paul Schadt was broadcasting from his building, Bass mentioned his dilemma.
Earnhardt called into the show and live on the air offered to sell Bass the land where his current gallery sits. Bass, of course, didn’t think he would be able to afford it, but a month later he approached Earnhardt to see if the offer was serious.
“He wanted to sell me the property down the street, but I really wanted the corner,” Bass explained. “I’ll always be in his debt because he gave me the property on the corner for the same price as the property down the street. He could have put a hotel here or whatever he wanted to, and I thought it was really incredible he did that for me.”
With Bass settled in to his new space, Earnhardt would occasionally stop by. One of the stories Bass loves to tell is the first time Earnhardt saw the new gallery and went around inspecting how things were done.
“He was here for about an hour and a half and walked around and told me everything I did wrong,” he smiled. “It was so funny, but he was absolutely right on everything he was pointing out. That was just him because he knew what he wanted and he knew how to get it.”
On another visit, Earnhardt got to see Bass in action for the first time. He was working on a painting titled “7&7,” which featured Earnhardt and fellow seven-time champion, Richard Petty.
“He just stood beside me for about 15 minutes while I was doing that and then he just looked at me and goes, ‘People just have no idea what you do, do they?’ I took that as the biggest compliment,” Bass said. “Those type things just stay with me all the time. It was just a really, really neat thing to be a part of his team, so to speak.”
In addition to Earnhardt artwork, the gallery features No. 3 sheet metal, as well as a roof. As far as Bass knows, the only two people to sit under that roof were Earnhardt and his friend, Neil Bonnett.
The Last Project
Dale Earnhardt passed away on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500. His 76th and final victory came at the site of this weekend’s Sprint Cup Series race, Talladega Superspeedway, where it’s never difficult to find Earnhardt fans.
As for Bass, he still hopes he makes Earnhardt proud with any project he takes on. And he’ll always remember the last time he saw his friend. It’s a story that can only be told in his words as he stares off and remembers the man who meant so much:
“The Saturday before we lost him, I was working on a toolbox design for Snap-On tools, and I was in the garage area. He came into the garage, and I walked over to show him the rough draft, and we talked about that and he green-lighted the project. I did the painting he had approved in June (after his passing).
“That was the most difficult painting I’ve ever done because it was the last one I ever talked to him about. It had also been up in the air whether (Snap-On) was going to do the toolboxes after we lost him. They decided in June to do it and told me to get going. The whole time I’m working on that painting, I’m thinking about how that will be the last project he and I talked about. So, that was difficult.
“But I find it so ironic that in December the previous year for Christmas, Kelley had called me up and wanted me to do a portrait of all of Dale’s kids and his grandkids. I ended up doing a pencil drawing, and I asked Kelley if she could get me a picture of him opening it on Christmas day. Sure enough, she did, and it means the world to me because the last thing we talked about was that picture.
“We had done all these projects together, all these paintings, all these car design projects, everything; and the last project that I got to talk to him about was his family. It was something non-racing, and it seemed appropriate. That was the last thing I talked to him about, and he told me how much he liked it.
“I said goodbye and left the garage area that night, and I waved at him the next morning when he was standing by the car, but that was the last conversation we ever had. I think it’s just so cool it was about family.”