"Axe" for 'guitar'?

[GEORGE THOMPSON]

My recollection as a jazz listener, not a player, from Boston in the
early-mid 1960s, was that the word "axe" was used to refer to any
instrument, and certainly not just guitar, which at that time wasn't
a prominent jazz instrument.  All axes were blown, including
the piano.  As a speculation regarding the origin, I would suggest
that a lumberman swings his axe.

Chuck Borsos says that it is "not likely that someone would call a
brac or zurna or bagpipe an axe".  At some point in the 1960s, Rufus
Harley, a musician whose main axe was a saxaphone, released at least
one LP on which he was featured as a bagpiper.  Would he have called
his bagpipes an axe?

GAT