[QUOTE=godfreydaniel;5139917]I took lessons from a jazz player named Howard Morgen. He used the book "Jazz Guitar Method" by Ronny Lee (a Mel Bay book) to teach jazz chords. Very easy to understand.
WOW, what a small world. When I was about 8 or 9 back around 1960 I began taking piano lessons from a guy named Eugene Mancini who was teaching out of Howard Morgan's upstairs studio near Main St Flushing, N.Y.. Probably 14 years later I looked him up again and took a few jazz lessons but that never went anywhere because I was really into bluegrass and down home country fingerpickin at the time (still am). Howard Morgan is cool!
How did I learn jazz though, well that depends on what type of jazz because there are quite a few styles of jazz that all sound very different. I really didn't resonate with lots of the jazz I was hearing in the 60s mainstream. In the 70s I remember hearing Louis Armstrong's intro solo on West End Blues which hooked me into early jazz styles. I began finding records and doing the back and forth with the needle thing copying licks and figuring out songs. Over the years I've dabbled in numerous styles of jazz but always seem to go back to the early stuff. Right now I'm going back to basics and listening to a lot of Eddie Lang, Lonnie Johnson and working out Joe Venuti solos on guitar. A great book I'm currently working with is Eddie Lang's Guitar Method
http://www.djangobooks.com/Item/Eddie_Lang
It's a little different than some be used to but if you empty your cup and just go with the concepts and exercises, it can lead to some really cool musical space, especially for styles played on steel string acoustic guitar (flat top or archtop).
-Jim