Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay, who spent the Seventies singing with the Grateful Dead, sang back-up on several classic Sixties hits, and fronted her own bands, has died. She was 78.
Godchaux died Sunday, Nov. 2, at a hospice facility in Nashville after a “lengthy struggle with cancer,” according to a statement shared with Rolling Stone by her representative, Dennis McNally. “She was a sweet and warmly beautiful spirit, and all those who knew her are united in loss. The family requests privacy at this time of grieving,” the statement continued. “In the words of Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, ‘May the four winds blow her safely home.’”
Godchaux joined the Grateful Dead in 1971 alongside her husband, Keith, who played keyboards. Her vocals were a key feature of the Dead’s seminal run during the Seventies, appearing on such classic albums as Europe ’72, Wake of the Flood, and Terrapin Station, not to mention countless legendary live recordings (including the famed Cornell ’77 gig and the Dead’s September 1978 shows at the Giza pyramid in Egypt).
Prior to joining the Dead, Godcheaux was working as an in-demand session singer in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. She contributed to hits like Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman” and Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds,” while also singing on songs by Duane Allman, Cher, Neil Diamond, and Boz Scaggs.
Godchaux and Keith also released one album together in 1975, and were set to start a new band in the early Eighties before Keith’s sudden death. Later, Godchaux would front her own group, alternately known as Donna Jean and the Tricksters and the Donna Jean Godchaux Band. Her last studio album, with musician Jeff Mattson, was released in 2014.
Born Donna Jean Thatcher in Florence, Alabama, Godchaux started her career in nearby Muscle Shoals, which was then at the center of a rock and soul renaissance during the 1960s. Along with her work with artists like Sledge and Cher, she sang on R.B. Greaves’ “Take a Letter Maria” and Diamond’s “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show.” She also worked with Joe Tex, Dionne Warwick, and Ben E. King.
During this time, Godchaux also lived and worked in Memphis, which is where she recorded with Presley in 1969. Along with “Suspicious Minds,” she sang on “In the Ghetto” and other songs Presley cut at the American Sound Studio. It was, as Godchaux told Rolling Stone in 2014, a “very intense” experience, though she and the other vocalists “were so professional” when they were singing.
Love Music?
Get your daily dose of everything happening in Australian/New Zealand music and globally.
After the session ended, though, she and the others took a photo with the King and then “went into the International House of Pancakes in Memphis and screamed bloody murder for about an hour, holding up that little Polaroid picture of us and Elvis together.”
In 1970, Godchaux left the South and traveled out west, settling in San Francisco. There, she met Keith and saw the Dead play for the first time. After one concert at a local club, Godchaux approached Jerry Garcia and pitched Keith to join: “I told Jerry that Keith needed to be in the band and I needed his home phone number, and I got his number!” she recalled. Both joined the band soon after.
For Godchaux, playing with the Dead presented a new challenge. As she told RS, she’d built her career as a studio singer, and was “used to having headphones and being in a controlled environment.” Singing live was far more chaotic, and she acknowledged that there are plenty of Dead recordings where her vocals are pitchy.
“Everything was so loud onstage. And not to mention being inebriated. I can’t defend myself very much, but I can’t blame it all on that,” she admitted with a laugh.
While the Dead were one of the most creatively formidable and inventive groups of the Seventies, the decade also took its toll. Godchaux’s relationship with Keith was tumultuous, and she was regularly drinking and using cocaine; Keith was also using drugs and members of the Dead’s crew recalled hearing frequent screaming matches between the couple.
The Godchauxs left the Grateful Dead in 1979. “It was sad, but it was what needed to happen,” she said. “It was turning into being not profitable for anybody. We needed to go, and they needed for us to go.”
The couple returned to Alabama with their son, Zion, and seemed to find some peace. Having recorded and released one album in 1975, Keith & Donna, the couple formed a new group, the Heart of Gold Band. They made some recordings, but soon after their first concert in 1980, Godchaux died in a car accident. (Some of the recordings were trickled out during the Eighties.)
In 1981, Godchaux remarried the Bay Area bassist David MacKay. Her work in music was limited to occasionally singing at church and appearing on a 1987 album by San Francisco band, Zero. Godchaux and MacKay eventually formed their own indie label, Heart of Gold Records, and in 1998 she released her debut album. In 2004, she reformed the Heart of Gold Band, which released a new record, At the Table.
Over the next few decades, Godchaux continued to tour and perform, releasing what would be her last album, Back Around, in 2014. She described the album as “my journey,” with its mix of Southern soul originals, covers of Sixties classic, and even a rendition of a Grateful Dead song, “Crazy Fingers.” The title, she explained to Rolling Stone in 2014, referred to coming full circle and to terms with her past.
“I have many regrets, of course, like you do about decisions you make in life,” she said. “You can’t make up for what isn’t there anymore, but you can continue on a journey that takes you somewhere. One of the lyrics in ‘Back Around’ is, ‘Looking for what might have been can tear you down.’ If you keep looking back, you got nothing. If you look ahead to what is there before you, then life is good.”
From Rolling Stone US
