I hope I'm not going to be writing any kind of heresy here, because I certainly don't want to offend or even irritate anyone here. However, if a person is a singer, he/she can learn to play jazz-oriented songs, let's say from the "American Songbook," and not have to dive into a massive amount of study about jazz playing. And an archtop guitar can be very accommodating for this kind of music.
I have been enjoying my Eastman archtop AR910CE and have offered a couple of jazz oriented songs recently, one for
"Georgia on my Mind," and one for
"The Christmas Song."
A jazz guitar is not absolutely required. I did
"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" on my acoustic Olson guitar. But for myself, I really like a song like this on a lightly amplified archtop.
I would agree that what I am doing is not strictly jazz, there is no improvisation, but it's rewarding and to most people it sounds like jazz. And it has the advantage of not requiring a great deal of study to figure out how to play it and make satisfying music. And finally, it sounds good on an archtop, at least to me.
- Glenn