if that works for you lee, then thats really great. What I was trying to say is that knowledge of the major scale will help you greatly when constructing chords and chord progressions, and then being able to solo over them.

One of the great things about jazz of course, is there are no rules. you don't have to play just the notes defined by the major scale and the key of a song, there are many things you can add to your solos that theoretically don't fit and that can sound Really Great(tm).

Learning the Major Scale and it's modes and how to construct chords from it has greatly improved my ability to solo over chords and even construct my own melodies. So in other words, learning music theory has helped me to pluck musical melodies and ideas from my head and put them into music form easily and then put chords over it and that knowledge can help me make what came out of my head even better (if that's possible)