Trombone | b. 1939

Phil Ranelin was born in Indianapolis on May 25, 1939, grew up in the Martindale-Brightwood neighbourhood, attended Arsenal Technical High School where Freddie Hubbard was a classmate and Wes Montgomery an alumnus and mentor, and built his early career in Indianapolis's jazz club circuit alongside both men. A chance sit-in with a Detroit visiting group in 1968 led him to the Motor City, where he found Motown session work playing on recordings by Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, The Four Tops, The Temptations and Martha Reeves alongside bassist James Jamerson and drummer Pistol Allen. That income gave him the foundation to invest in his own music. In 1971 he and saxophonist Wendell Harrison co-founded Tribe, a Detroit collective that operated as a band, a record label and a magazine simultaneously, using experimental jazz as a vehicle for Black political consciousness and musician self-determination. His own Tribe recordings, "Message from the Tribe" (1972, with Harrison), "The Time Is Now!" (1974) and "Vibes from the Tribe" (1976), blend post-bop, spiritual jazz, funk and African rhythms in a way that anticipated the rare groove and acid jazz collecting scenes that later embraced them. After Tribe disbanded in 1978 he moved to Los Angeles and played with Freddie Hubbard for several years, worked as an educator and cultural ambassador, received a Cultural Exchange International grant from the city of Los Angeles, and was inducted into the Indianapolis Jazz Foundation Hall of Fame. He suffered a stroke in 2021 and returned to Indianapolis. Ranelin turned 87 in May 2026.