Collection: Phil Ranelin

Phil Ranelin grew up on the east side of Indianapolis in the Martindale-Brightwood neighbourhood, attended Arsenal Technical High School where Freddie Hubbard was a classmate and Wes Montgomery had attended years before, and spent his early career absorbing the J.J. Johnson trombone tradition while working Indianapolis clubs alongside Montgomery, who became a mentor. A Detroit saxophonist named Sam Sanders heard him sit in at an Indianapolis club in 1968 and told him there was more work in Detroit. He moved, began working with Harold McKinney's Creative Profile, played with Marcus Belgrave and Roy Brooks, and found steady session work at Motown, playing on recordings by Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, The Four Tops, The Temptations and Martha Reeves alongside bassist James Jamerson and drummer Pistol Allen. In 1971 he and Wendell Harrison co-founded Tribe, a collective that functioned simultaneously as a band, a record label and a magazine. "The Time Is Now!" (Tribe, 1974) and "Vibes from the Tribe" (Tribe, 1976) are the most collected entries in his leader discography. Tribe disbanded in 1978 and Ranelin moved to Los Angeles, where he played alongside Freddie Hubbard for several years and built an ongoing career as bandleader, educator and cultural ambassador. He suffered a stroke in 2021 and returned to Indianapolis to recover. He turned 87 in May 2026.