Donna Jean Godchaux performs with Dead & Company at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee, on June 12, 2016. AMY HARRIS / AMY HARRIS/INVISION/AP
Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay, a soulful mezzo-soprano who provided backing vocals on such 1960s classics as Suspicious Minds and When a Man Loves a Woman and was a featured singer with the Grateful Dead for much of the 1970s, has died at 78.
A spokesperson for Godchaux-MacKay confirmed that she died Sunday, November 2, at Alive Hospice in Nashville after having cancer. Godchaux-McKay and other Grateful Dead members were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.
Born Donna Jean Thatcher in Florence, Alabama, she had yet to turn 20 when she became a session performer in nearby Muscle Shoals, where many soul and rhythm and blues hits were recorded, and also was on hand for numerous sessions at the Memphis-based American Sound Studio. Her credits included Elvis Presley's Suspicious Minds, Percy Sledge's When a Man Loves a Woman and songs with Neil Diamond, Boz Scaggs and Cher.
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