Former Grateful Dead Member Dies of Cancer: Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay Was 78

Grateful Dead singer Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay has died following a lengthy battle with cancer. She was 78.

Godchaux-MacKay died Sunday at Alive Hospice in Nashville, Tenn., her family told Rolling Stone in a statement.

“She was a sweet and warmly beautiful spirit, and all those who knew her are united in loss,” the family said Monday. “The family requests privacy at this time of grieving. In the words of Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, ‘May the four winds blow her safely home.’”

Godchaux-MacKay was born on Aug. 22, 1947, in Florence, Ala., and took to music right away with the band Southern Comfort. Godchaux-MacKay went on to become a session singer for Percy Sledge, Elvis Presley, Cher, Duane Allman, Neil Diamond, and Boz Scaggs, among others, singing backup on Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hits “When a Man Loves a Woman” with Sledge and “Suspicious Minds” with Presley.

In 1971, Godchaux-MacKay joined the Grateful Dead alongside her husband, keyboard player Keith Godchaux.

“It was great fun,” she told AL.com in 2016 of performing with the Grateful Dead. “I loved singing with those guys and we had an absolute blast.”

Godchaux-MacKay and her husband would go on to welcome son Zion in 1974, and five years later, they decided to leave the Grateful Dead.

“Keith and I, we were wasted. We were exhausted. And the band was exhausted with us,” she told Rolling Stone in 2014 of the decision to leave the group. “The band knew we had to be out of the band, and Keith and I had been talking about ‘How in the world do you quit the Grateful Dead?’ It was sad, but it was what needed to happen. It was turning into being not profitable for anybody. We needed to go, and they needed for us to go.”

After Godchaux-MacKay and her husband left, they formed the Heart of Gold Band in 1980. Their new musical endeavor was cut short, however, when Keith died in July 1980 in a car crash. He was 32.

Godchaux-MacKay would go on to remarry in 1981, tying the knot with David MacKay, with whom she went on to welcome son Kinsman.

In 1994, Godchaux-MacKay was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the Grateful Dead, and in 2006, she launched the Donna Jean Godchaux Band.

Godchaux-MacKay is survived by husband David, their son Kinsman and his wife Molly, her son Zion and grandson Delta, her sister Gogi Clark, and her brother, Ivan Thatcher.