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The difference between the rock tradition and the jazz tradition is:
Rockers tend to form bands with their peers. The guys in U2 all grew up in the same neighborhood, went to school together, and when the punk rock bug bit them, they naturally congregated and started doing the music they wanted to do. And there are carloads of bands whose story is substantially the same. Maybe they break up, and later get into new groups (viz. Audioslave), but they're largely still looking within their own age cohort and stylistic arena.
The jazz tradition is, you get good enough on your horn, you want to go out and play with people, and ideally you'd like to get paid for it. You attempt to come to the attention of an older and wiser (or at least more experienced) musician who will hire you to play in his band. You accumulate gig and recording credits, and frequent flier miles, and work experience, and if and when you think you've got your shit together, you start your own band, drawing on the skills you hopefully learned by observing the dudes that hired you in the first place-- a kind of apprenticeship system. Some jazz musicians (e.g. Miles, Duke) end up practically spawning a dynasty, all the musicians they nurtured and influenced carrying the stylistic torch long after its progenitor's demise...
This is also the rule in bluegrass/old timey (Bela Fleck was Frank Wakefield's banjo player, playing a much more traditional style, before he started doing the weird stuff he does now-- and Wakefield was himself rather eccentric in bluegrass terms) and such rockers as don't act like the typical buddy movie (e.g. Zappa, Jethro Tull).
OTOH, there are also jazz (and bluegrass) ensembles that are proud to be known as bands (e.g. Art Ensemble of Chicago, Weather Report). And there are arguable some where the bandleader is the name on the label, but everybody's contribution is indispensable to the ensemble sound-- I would suggest the Coltrane quartet with Tyner, Garrison and Elvin Jones; Ornette's quartet with Cherry, Haden and Blackwell; the Miles quintet with Shorter, Hancock, Holland and Tony Williams. There are two reasons to think of such bands as "Miles Davis"-- because Miles (or his manager) signed the contracts, which isn't a very good reason, and because Miles himself decides what to play, which may be reason enough.
That said, I prefer bands to solo artists, but I temper it with an understanding of the above-- I consider "Miles Davis" to represent a band, or rather, a bunch of different bands (and I don't collect the records of the ensembles I don't like). I consider Joni Mitchell to be a solo artist, because her early and genuinely solo recordings are just as interesting to me as the jazzbo records with Jaco on 'em, and I've got a bunch of those. I consider Dave Matthews to be a solo artist, because I don't think he's getting the best out of his sidemen, over and above that he has no gift for melody.
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