Could someone explain jazz and basic chord progressions for me?

There is no quick answer to your question. The solution is to study music-theory until it hits you in the face.

sorry, hang on. Let me actually answer your question. A chord progression is simply chords over rhythm.

First, if you don't have one get a fake book or a real book. These are books with melody, chords, and some occasional intro's, bass lines and coda's.

"Jazz" forms are just basic, big picture, organizational tools. Forms are organized by letter ie. AABA, ABA, ABAC, AAAA... Each letter represents a few bars of music, generally an even number, in jazz mostly 8 bars. They are a musical shorthand. On stage, or in rehearsal, they could be called out as on-the-fly rearrangements.

These song forms make up Heads. A "Head" is the initial and final statement of the melody used in jazz songs. After the band plays the head, the harmonic, as well as a bit of the melodic, parts of the "Head" are used to improvise or solo over.

For instance a common head is "I Got Rhythm" look it up, find a lead sheet, a chord chart, if not just pop open your real book and start counting measures. Rhythm changes as they are called are commonly used by jazz musicians as harmony for new tunes. At this point it's almost mandatory for a jazz composer to have written his own tune over those chord changes, and you will need to know them if you are in a band. So here is the basic layout: 8 bars playing about the Imaj7 (the one chord) that transitions to a IV (a four chord) through a I7 (a one dominant 7), those 8 repeated, then 8 bars of a cycle progression (example A7 to D7 to G7 to C7 if Imaj7= Fmaj7). Finally the first 8 bars are repeated again.

A good thing to understand is that harmony in jazz is a flexible, but only to a certain point. You still have to play the right chord, but the right chord often needs notes added or subtracted. There are also some common transitions, or substitutions, that are used, but these are advanced concepts that should be saved for a different question. So when looking at jazz tunes be aware that the chords may differ.

There are three different ways of looking at Jazz forms: the micro, a song could be 32 bars long form AABA; the macro, all jazz tunes are AAAAAAA... could be 300 plus measures, each AABA is just another A; or situationally as all jazz tunes are ABA where the A's are the head and the B as the improvisation or solo.

I also wabt to know!!

Get a copy of Micky Bakers' Complete course in Jazz Guitar, and study at least 4 hours a day. Good Luck.