Few jazz saxophonists wielded their instrument with the kind of weaponized intensity that alto player Jackie McLean had in his prime; fewer still made the transition from traditional bop to free jazz influences while still letting both facets work so well together. Close your eyes and wave your finger in the general direction of his discography from 1962’s epochal Let Freedom Ring sessions to his Blue Note swan song years in ’67, and you’ll find yourself pointing at a classic — yet Right Now! stands out as especially potent. In just four cuts — one evocatively lonely ballad eulogizing avant-jazz great Eric Dolphy (“Poor Eric”), and three full-steam-ahead numbers — the range of tone, evocation, and technique McLean displays is almost unreal, with the rest of the quartet (pianist Larry Willis, bassist Bob Cranshaw, and drummer Clifford Jarvis) providing a propulsion that seems to be egging him on to break limits he doesn’t actually have. McLean’s own composition “Eco” is one of the most dynamic pieces in his repertoire, a high-speed ascent into the stratosphere that he performs with unpredictable yet thoroughly intuitive-feeling progressions that threaten chaos yet shape it into startling directness. And the other two scorchers — Larry Willis’s light-footed yet power-surging “Christel’s Tune,” and the conflicting modes of optimistic brightness and guarded tension in Charles Tolliver’s title cut — earn the exclamation point on the album cover, and then some.