Here is a great guide for beginners regarding jazz harmony:

The Ultimate No Nonsense Guide to Jazz Harmony

The contents are pretty much what's labeled on the tin -- straightforward explanations of concepts like:

• II-V-I and other cadences
• Secondary Dominants
• Backdoor Progressions
• Backcycling
• Tags
• Altered Harmony

​Knowing your intervals helps you quickly find the roots of classic chord progressions.  Since many chord progressions in classic jazz tunes move in fourths, it is a good idea to learn the circle of fourths and be able to move in fourths at any point on the guitar neck.  This pdf might help you locate all the perfect intervals in the major scale.

​Since the guitar is stacked in fourths, moving vertically from bottom string to top is automatically a fourths motion.  In the image below you can see how starting on the third on the low E and traveling to the high E will move you though the roots of a 3-6-2-5-1 and then to the four.  Remember that strings 2 and 1 (B and E) are tonally shifted up a fret.  The vii happens to be a tri-tone away from the IV. Tri-tones are basically a 'diagonal' away on the fretboard.

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You can see how a 3-6-2-5-1 would look on the circle of fourths below.  Moving in a counter-clockwise motion brings you from the iii around to the I and then to the IV if you continue.  In order to get to the remaining interval -- the vii -- you would have to jump to the other side of the circle. Diametrically opposite tones on the circle are a tritone apart.