Where to start playing Jazz?

A lot of people are basically just saying listen to jazz. It's really important that you listen to jazz, but there is a lot of theory that would be hard to pick up just by listening. The advice that some people gave, "just buy a Real book, and stick to the chords," or "just learn the tunes" to someone who doesn't know the theory is nuts to me. That's like handing a bass to someone who never played before and saying, "Alright, just play the right notes and you'll be fine."
The most efficient way to learn the theory would be to get a private instructor who knows jazz and learn it from them. However, if for whatever reason you don't want to do that, there are some other resources. Can you read music? If not, then that is the first step. If you can read music, The Jazz Theory Book by Mark Levine is a really good resource. It's not bass-centric, but you can learn a lot from it. There are also some online resources for learning jazz. There are some free and subscription-based lessons from [the international institute of bass.](www.instituteofbass.com/). I haven't tried their paid lessons, but their free ones are good. This lesson on creating walking jazz basslines is very good, but you will need to know some music theory first (the Mark Levine book has all the music theory). Scott Devine also has some very good bass lessons including a good introduction to creating walking bass lines.
I'm assuming that you play electric bass? One thing that you will find is that there aren't that upright bassists greatly outnumber the electric bassists in jazz. It's really easy to find jazz recordings with great acoustic bass work, but it's harder to find recordings that use electric. Here are some of my recommendations: Jaco pastorius: the legend. Recommended albums: Jaco Pastorius, Heavy Weather (by Weather Report), Bright Size Life (led by Pat Metheny)
Bob Cranshaw: bebop player, very solid walking bass lines. Not much to take the spotlight, although will occasionally solo. Recommend albums: +3 (by Sonny Rollins), Road shows vol 1, 2 or 3 (by Sonny Rollins)
Steve Swallow: bebop player, plays a five-string with a high-c string. Takes lots of solos in the upper range. Recommended album: Damaged in Transit
Victor Wooten: technically insane bass player. Has a fair amount of solo albums that are not jazz, but plays with the jazz-folk group Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. Recommended albums: Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, The flight of the Cosmic Hippo, Rocket Science.
Stanley Clarke: plays jazz fusion on electric bass, and straight-ahead jazz on upright. Recommended albums: Light as a Feather (by Return to Forever). School days also has some very strong bass work, but I don't really like the album personally.
Esperanza Spalding: has gotten a lot of recent attention. Probably better known for her upright work, but also plays electric well. Any of her recent albums is good.
Reggie Washington: plays some kind of weird jazz with Steve Coleman and the Five Elements. You can download some of this for free here. The Tao of mad phat is good.

/r/Bass Thread