Donna Jean GodchauxMacKay, Grateful Dead vocalist, dies at 78

Donna Jean GodchauxMacKay, a vocalist who sang with the Grateful Dead during the band's influential 1970s period and who earlier lent her voice to several landmark recordings, died on Sunday at a hospice facility in Nashville. She was 78. Her family said she had been battling cancer and requested privacy; in a statement they remembered her as "a sweet and warmly beautiful spirit" and quoted lyricist Robert Hunter, "May the four winds blow her safely home."

Born Donna Jean Thatcher on August 22, 1947, in Florence, Alabama, GodchauxMacKay began her career as a session singer in the Muscle Shoals studio scene that shaped much of 1960s soul and R&B. She sang backing vocals on chart-topping singles including Percy Sledge's "When a Man Loves a Woman" and Elvis Presley's "Suspicious Minds," and appeared on recordings by artists such as Cher, Boz Scaggs, Duane Allman, Neil Diamond and others.

After moving to California in 1970, she married keyboardist Keith Godchaux and both joined the Grateful Dead in 1971. Donna Jean became the band's only full-time backing vocalist during what fans and historians often call the Godchaux era. Her harmonies and distinctive, gospel-tinged voice featured...