Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay, a soulful mezzo-soprano who supplied backing vocals on such Nineteen Sixties classics as “Suspicious Minds” and “When a Man Loves a Woman” and was a featured singer with the Grateful Dead for a lot of the Nineteen Seventies, has died at 78.
A spokesperson for Godchaux-MacKay confirmed that she died Sunday at Alive Hospice in Nashville after having most cancers. Godchaux-McKay and different Grateful Dead members had been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.
Born Donna Jean Thatcher in (*78*), Alabama, she had but to show 20 when she grew to become a session performer in close by Muscle Shoals, the place many soul and rhythm and blues hits had been recorded, and likewise was available for quite a few classes at the Memphis-based American Sound Studio. Her credit included Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds,” Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman” and songs with Neil Diamond, Boz Scaggs and Cher.
In the early Nineteen Seventies, she and pianist/then-husband Keith Godchaux joined the Grateful Dead and remained with them for a number of excursions and albums, together with “Terrapin Station,” “Shakedown Street” and “From the Mars Hotel.” Godchaux appeared on quite a few songs, whether or not becoming a member of with Jerry Garcia on “Scarlet Begonias” or writing and taking the lead on “From the Heart of Me.”
The Godchauxs left the Dead in 1979, with hopes of forming their very own group, however Keith Godchaux died the next 12 months from accidents sustained in an car accident. Donna, who married bassist David MacKay in 1981, continued to tour and file over the next a long time.
Her albums embrace “Back Around” and “Donna Jean and the Tricksters.” In the Nineteen Seventies, she and Keith Godchaux launched “Keith & Donna.”
In addition to David MacKay, survivors embrace sons Kinsman MacKay and Zion Godchaux and two siblings, Gogi Clark and Ivan Thatcher.