h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"Improvising Jazz" by Jerry Coker is pretty well regarded by music teachers (six reviews at Amazon mostly 5 stars). In the back is a one page table with nine alternate chord progressions, using jazz style chords, e.g. Maj7, diminished, etc. Fun to experiment with, maybe with an algorithmic composition program like "Band-in-a-Box":

http://www.pgmusic.com/index.html

The book is $11.20:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0671628291/qid=1129043558/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-5250044-4620838?v=glance&s=books

I should have mentioned, the table I'm talking about is for 12-bar blues , there are other tables of alternate chord progressions for other song structures, e.g. A-A-B-A 32 bar songs.

Sounds good! Obviously there are lots of different ways, but this entry just talks about the simplest one.

Understood. But with programs like "Band-in-a-Box", its almost as easy to type in a fancy jazz chord like Ab7#11 as it is to type in A, especially when you have a table telling you what to type. And you don't have to play it, let the program figure it out, it knows most of them, and can add a melody, etc. Sounds a little mechanical, but its still kind of fun.