Jazz is distinct from certain other art forms – notably Western art music – in its emphasis on performance as the primary medium of creative achievement, and many of the greatest jazz composers, such as Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk, are also among its greatest players. For this reason, the following discussion of jazz guitar styles appropriately centers on the individual musicians who have pioneered those styles, and, from time to time, on individual recordings that epitomize them.

The history of jazz begins in obscurity around the beginning of the twentieth century at a time when much popular and folk music of oral tradition was not yet widely written about or captured on recordings. The guitar was already well entrenched as a versatile instrument for popular music: a “poor man's piano,” maybe, but also a rich resource in its own right. It was one of many stringed instruments, and combinations of one kind or another – including banjo orchestras, mandolin orchestras, Hawaiian groups, Mexican mariachi groups, minstrel groups, and “Gypsy” bands, to name a few – were ubiquitous. Their sound is echoed today in the legacy of folk, bluegrass, and other string-band music, but the range and stand-alone capability of the guitar made it particularly useful for ragtime and blues, the two greatest influences in the formation of jazz.