Listen, I love jazz 'till the day I DIE. Jazz is fantastic, phenomenal, and the embodiment of the rebellious american spirit. The damn greatest. Until the seventies rolled around, and these doofuses started a thing called "fusion." Fusion meant electronics and electronics meant you could hear the bass. When bassists can hear themselves, they start taking solos. And that is when jazz ended.
Bass is a fantastic instrument that i support to the ends of the world, but when they stop laying down the back beats and start taking solos, it breaks the conventions of jazz. Now, the breaking of conventions is arguably what DEFINES jazz; however, when you start defying jazz, you aren't playing jazz anymore: its something new and different.
A bass line is called that for a reason. It is the line that a bass is meant to play. Just because the strings allow you to go high enough to solo in the generic sense, doesn't mean you SHOULD.
Sure you can throw your children out of car windows, but does that mean you should?
The bassist's job is to support. When they break away from their supportive role, the whole band falls apart. The glue between the rhythm and the melody breaks apart, and the song loses its focus and direction.
Originally, way back when, before the bass was an instrument, orchestras just has cellos, violas, and violins. then architectural abilities grew, and the "bass" notes in the cello could no longer fill the great halls of Versailles, which prompted the creation of a bigger, better way to support an ensemble throughout space and time: the bass.
The whole purpose is to support and help the music withstand the elements, and when bassist's heads grow too big and they feel left out of the solo game, the music falls apart and the beauty that remains is far from the jazz we know and love.
If you want to solo, add two strings and call yourself a guitar. Your instrument confines your purpose and abilities.
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