Glad to be reminded about Doc Watson. The overlap of jazz and blues made for a great combination when a jazz rhythm section was combined with two folk / blues guitarists and a folk singer to form Pentangle. But if you think jazz is not melodic, try listening to Erroll Garner playing Misty.⁵....sublime.
Agreed, Pentangle did some nice stuff. I have their Cruel Sister album and it still gets played now and again.
I would also definitely agree that jazz can be melodic, but I think the difficulty some people have is that jazz can be many other things too, one could equally use the adjectives complex, impenetrable, dissonant, arhythmic, and so on. If you aren't familiar with the genre, it can be a bit tricky working out what's going on.
Me, I love a bit of Joe Pass, John Coltrane or Miles Davis, but some of the more outré stuff bores me rigid. I remember sitting through a 2 hour Trilok Gurtu gig one night waiting for it to improve. Sadly it did not, mind you at least I made it to the end. We walked out of a Sun Ra Arkestra gig after about 20 minutes.
