My upbringing was a relatively isolated (rural) and simple (poor) one in the US. We didn't have a TV until 1986 when I was 10, and our house did not have any sort of stereo in it. We mostly just heard recorded music in the car. When I was quite young, my father used to drive me into the city sometimes when he was working the night shift, and he would drop me off at my Grandparents. The one hour drive was always at night and always accompanied with Jazz (Minneapolis 88.5 FM), and my little child brain was enamored with it. A funny perspective I had when I was little was from those trips into the city; I simply knew and thought of Jazz as "night time city music," and it's very funny to me how accurate that actually is.
As I grew up, I'd occasionally tune into what the other kids listened to, but my ear always bent toward Jazz and almost anything that was strongly influenced by Jazz. In general it's made me relatively poor at talking about music with most people, because most people haven't heard of any of the music I listen to, other than the famous ones; and likewise I'm not very good at following other peoples excitement with more popular music. I'm okay with it though, I'm used to being a step or two out of pace with the rest of society.
I could name all sorts of aspects of Jazz that I think make it great and explain why I love it, but the reality is that I most likely love Jazz because of that connection with my father, that prized 1:1 time we spent in the car together (big religious family), that it was a trip into the big city full of lights, and that I was also going to spend time with my beloved grandparents. Jazz was delivered to me wrapped up in a bow of of happy feelings that made me feel special, and I've loved it for that ever since.
