Ernest "Bass" Hill (March 14, 1900, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – September 16, 1964, New York City) was an American jazz double-bassist.[1]
Hill played from 1924 with Claude Hopkins, and remained with him on a tour of Europe with Josephine Baker the following year.[2] Hill and Hopkins collaborated numerous times over the next few years and again in the 1940s.[2] In 1928 he played with Leroy Smith & His Orchestra and Bill Brown & His Brownies, and worked in the Eugene Kennedy Orchestra the next year.[2] In the 1930s he played with Willie Bryant, Bobby Martin's Cotton Club Serenaders, Benny Carter, Chick Webb, and Rex Stewart.[2]
Hill was in Europe in the late 1930s when he fled to Switzerland at the outbreak of World War II.[2] There he played with Mac Strittmacher before returning to the United States in 1940.[2] In that year, he recorded with Eddie South and Hot Lips Page.[1] Following this he played with Maurice Hubbard, Hopkins again, Zutty Singleton, Louis Armstrong (1943), Cliff Jackson, Herbie Cowens, and Minto Kato.[2] In 1949 he returned to Europe, where he played in Switzerland and Italy with Bill Coleman and then in Germany with Big Boy Goudie until 1952.[2]
Upon his return to the US he worked in New York City with Happy Caldwell, Henry Morrison, and Wesley Fagan.[2] He worked in the musicians' union in the last decade of his life.[2]