The Jazz Bass was the second model of electric bass

Bass guitar

The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....

 created by Leo Fender

Leo Fender

Clarence Leonidas "Leo" Fender was an American inventor who founded Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company, or "Fender" for short...

. The bass is distinct from the Precision Bass

Fender Precision Bass

The Fender Precision Bass is an electric bass.Designed by Leo Fender as a prototype in 1950 and brought to market in 1951, the Precision was the first electric bass to earn widespread attention and use. A revolutionary instrument for the time, the Precision Bass has made an immeasurable impact on...

 in that its tone is brighter and richer in the midrange and treble with less emphasis on the fundamental harmonic

Harmonic series (music)

Pitched musical instruments are often based on an approximate harmonic oscillator such as a string or a column of air, which oscillates at numerous frequencies simultaneously. At these resonant frequencies, waves travel in both directions along the string or air column, reinforcing and canceling...

. Because of this, many bass players who want to be more "forward" in the mix (including smaller bands such as power trio

Power trio

A power trio is a rock and roll band format where the traditional power trio has a lineup of guitar, bass and drums, leaving out the rhythm guitar or keyboard that are used in other rock music to fill out the sound with chords...

s) prefer the Jazz Bass. The sound of the Fender Jazz Bass has been fundamental in the development of signature sounds in certain musical genres, such as funk

Funk

Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...

, disco

Disco

Disco is a genre of dance music. Disco acts charted high during the mid-1970s, and the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1970s. It had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, gay, psychedelic, and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and...

, reggae

Reggae

Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...

, blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

, heavy metal

Heavy metal music

Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...

 and jazz fusion

Jazz fusion

Jazz fusion is a musical fusion genre that developed from mixing funk and R&B rhythms and the amplification and electronic effects of rock, complex time signatures derived from non-Western music and extended, typically instrumental compositions with a jazz approach to lengthy group improvisations,...

.
First introduced in 1960 as the Deluxe Model, it was marketed as a stablemate to the Jazzmaster

Fender Jazzmaster

The Fender Jazzmaster is an electric guitar designed as an upmarket sibling to the Fender Stratocaster. First introduced at the 1958 NAMM Show, it was initially marketed at jazz guitarists, but found favor among surf rock guitarists in the early 1960s...

 guitar which was also marketed as a Deluxe Model in its own right.