Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay, former member of American rock band Grateful Dead, has died at 78.
Her representative confirmed to People magazine that she passed away on Sunday, November 2, while in hospice care in Nashville. Her cause of death was declared “a lengthy struggle with cancer.”
“She was a sweet and warmly beautiful spirit, and all those who knew her are united in loss,” the statement read. “In the words of Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, ‘May the four winds blow her safely home.’”
Before joining the Grateful Dead in 1971 alongside her husband, keyboardist Keith Godchaux, the Alabama native had already cemented her legacy in music history. She was a session vocalist at Muscle Shoals, singing background on chart-topping classics like Elvis Presley’s Suspicious Minds and Percy Sledge’s When a Man Loves a Woman.
Though she initially labelled the band’s sound “ragged,” it was a San Francisco concert that changed her perspective.
“To them, music was an adventure, like something spiritual,” she told The Baltimore Sun in 2007. “I’d never heard anything like that. I thought, ‘This is what I want to do.’”
She went on to help shape some of the Dead’s most iconic songs, including Eyes of the World and Playing in the Band.
After leaving the group in 1979, she and Keith formed the Heart of Gold Band before tragedy struck when he died in a car accident in 1980.
Godchaux-MacKay later remarried musician David MacKay, returning to her Alabama roots and continuing to perform.
Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, she leaves behind a lasting musical legacy and a spirit that helped define an era of rock history.