There are reasons that playing like JAE or Jamerson is rare.
JAE is extremely difficult to emulate. His bass lines and speed intimidate the hell out of me. There are people who can run his bass lines, but not many can do it well.
Jamerson is a challenge not only of technique, but of thought. He had a way of thinking that resulted in bass lines different from anyone else.
That doesn't really convince me given the fact that it is difficult to play like EvH, Yngwie or, say, John Petrucci too, yet many kids all around the world do it. Speed is something enough 16 year olds can learn relatively quickly if they set their minds to it as any visit to a Guitar Center or music fair will tell you.
Now you can of course say that the more technically-minded kids tend to go for guitar rather than bass, but there are still enough blitz kids on bass out there.
I believe that the role for bass has simple become more limited in the last few decades - people say what a genius JAE was, yet I'm certain that anybody playing like him (outside of a bass solo spot) would be unceremoniously kicked out of most recording studios and auditions today. People are no longer prepared to give that type of bass playing room.
Even his former band mates do not really seem to miss his bass playing that much. Townsend misses him as a person, but not really his bass playing (where JAE allowed little outside interference); I've never heard Daltrey say anything about JAE other than that he doesn't like performing his songs on stage. And Kenny Jones has immortalized himself with the quip: "
Within The Who there was only one person playing bass: my bass drum. But we had two lead guitarists. I could never adapt to that role."
I always said it, they should have chosen Ian Paice over Kenny J at those post-Keith Moon auditions.
But they went for the guy they personally knew rather than the guy who would have fitted better musically.
