Founded in the late 1990’s in Detroit, Michigan, Mack Avenue Records’ beginnings were conceived out of a genuine love for jazz and the artists that create it. Gretchen Valade, the label’s founder, sat at the grand piano in her living room composing Nat King Cole and Peggy Lee–inspired vocal charts and wanted to find a way to get them recorded. In that moment Mack Avenue was born.
Mack Avenue’s recordings have won or been nominated for multiple Grammy®, NAACP, A2IM Libera Awards and other media honors, including our most recent Grammy® nominees Stanley Clarke and Alfredo Rodríquez (2015) and Cecile McLorin Salvant, Jimmy Greene, Kirk Whalum and Christian McBride (2016).