Per the other comments in this thread, I was able to reproduce your problem on my 10.6.8 Mac running Chrome 25.0.1364.172.
I was able to get the player running by using the following code
p = $("#jquery_jplayer_1");
p.jPlayer("play",NaN);
Or, if you want to give up completely you can just trigger a click on the play button.
$('.jp-play').trigger('click');