Using Craft Prune - convert JSON Array of Objects to simple array
Ended up working out a solution:

var myData = {{ craft.entries.section('sectionName').find() | prune(['title']) | json_encode() | raw  }};
    var myArray = $.makeArray(myData);
    var newArray = new Array();
    $.each( arr, function(key, value) {
        $.each(value, function(keyNew, valueNew){
            newArray.push(valueNew);
        });
    });