Brian, your other option is to get Band-in-a-Box, the autoaccompaniment generator, available from PG Music at:
www.pgmusic.comBe sure to get the Realdrums, as the jazz tracks were recorded by the great jazz drummer Terry Clarke. Using the Realdrums will at least stop you from developing a robotic swing feel. And, tons of people have created Band-in-a-Box files for jazz standards already, available through the Band-in-a-Box Yahoo group. Getting Band-in-a-Box to generate backing tracks will save you lots of time. However, please load what it generates into something like Sonar and put your own creative stamp on it. The bass line, piano voicings, and other parts that Band-in-a-Box generates may not be your idea of the most musical, pleasing or interesting! Other things you can do to keep things interesting are coming up with novel intros and endings, perhaps trying tunes in different time signatures and keys other than the one printed in fakebooks, reharmonize the melody and come up with your own chord changes, etc. A great melody will often work in many styles. Take a swing tune and try it as a bossa nova or a ballad or even with a funk feel. i.e. make the material your own however you can.
I hope you will consider finding at least one other real live human musician to join your group, making it a trio. Since jazz, more so than some other genres, is about playing music with other people, including at least some degree of improvisation and spontaneous interplay and communication, I always feel cheated when I run into someone playing along to backing tracks. If you're using backing tracks, wehre does improvisation come into the picture? And, how do you distinguish between performing out with backing tracks and just practicing at home with them?
This is just one guy's opinion of course, and I realize that the crappy economy and typically pathetic wages earned by gigging musicians drive many to make these sorts of artistic compromises, just to get more work. Often, the $100 paid to a gigging musician today is the same $100 they would have made in 1975, except of course that $100 is worth a lot less today! It's sad, and I'm not sure what the answer is, given how many people are quite willing to play gigs for little or no money. But I'm getting off-topic.
What instruments do you have already? I've done successful gigs with myself on guitar and a friend on bass where we still manage to keep it interesting over three 45-minute sets.
Some other options for learning lots of tunes are: 1. Backing tracks from Jamey Aebersold.2. Backing tracks under the name "Realbook Playalongs", available through Hal Leonard (12 CD set).
3. The Vanilla Book, simplified changes to hundreds of tunes, available at:
http://ralphpatt.com/Song.html 4. The New Guide to Harmony with Lego Bricks, by Conrad Cork: http://www.jazzwise.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=862 5. INSIGHTS IN JAZZ: An Inside View of Jazz Standard Chord Progressions, By John A Elliott http://www.dropback.co.uk/6. The best way is still to go back to the old masters, listen closely to their recordings, and transcribe what you hear! Only recently have we had all these books available, and I'm not sure they are a worthwhile shortcut to really knowing the material internally. Keith Jaritt's Standards Trio is a great way to learn tunes. Ella Fitzgerald recorded the definitive version of the American Songbook, some 18 or so CD's worth of standard tunes. Heck, track down as many versions of a song as you can, and make sure at least one of them includes vocals. Many old lyrics seem hokey and silly today, but at least if you learn the lyrics, you will have a lot less chance of getting lost when you play the tune yourself.
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