1966 · Album
Right Now!
Recorded 1965 · Blue Note · Personnel: Jackie McLean (alto saxophone), Larry Willis (piano), Bob Cranshaw (bass), Clifford Jarvis (drums)
Peak Powers in a Room with Four
McLean and his rhythm section cut through the mid-1960s with clarity and bite, inside and outside at once.
Right Now! catches Jackie McLean at a moment when he had figured out exactly what he wanted to say on the alto saxophone. By 1965, McLean had spent enough time in the tradition to break it open without sounding lost. The quartet here — McLean, Larry Willis on piano, Bob Cranshaw on bass, and Clifford Jarvis on drums — works like a tight unit with no wasted motion. Willis gives McLean room to move, Cranshaw locks in the pocket, and Jarvis plays with the kind of crisp attention that lets a horn player breathe.
What made McLean distinctive was his willingness to play both inside and outside the changes in the same solo, sometimes in the same phrase. He could be bluesy and accessible one moment, then veer into territory that felt genuinely uncertain the next. His tone had an edge to it — not smooth, not pretty in the conventional way, but honest. AllMusic reviewer Scott Yanow heard this directly, awarding the album 4½ stars and writing that McLean was "at the peak of his powers during this period" and that the rhythm section had inspired "a particularly strong example of Jackie McLean's unique inside/outside music of the 1960s."
This album sits in the middle of McLean's best work rather than at the beginning, so it's not the place to start if you're new to him. But if you already know his sound and want to hear him operate at full command with a group that understood what he was after, Right Now! delivers that completely. The recording is direct and clear — no studio tricks, just four musicians making decisions in real time.
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