Is Jazz Based on the Blues?

Questions from a reader

One of my top readers wrote in to ask me a few questions about jazz. I’ll cover these in a series of articles, beginning with this one that focuses on the relationship of the blues genre to the jazz genre.

One question was:

“Jazz is blues-based….there are predominantly, 12-bar and 16-bar blues. Most use a i-iv-v construction. But after that, it seems th…