A Grateful Dead singer has passed away from a long illness at the age of 78.
Donna Jean Godchaux was in hospice in Nashville, Tennessee at the time of her death after battling cancer for many years, Rolling Stone reported on Monday.
The songbird worked with the famous rock band – fronted by the late Jerry Garcia – in the 1970s.
The Grateful Dead was formed during the rise of the counterculture in Palo Alto, California, in 1965. They stood out for blending rock, blues, jazz, folk, country, bluegrass, rock and roll, gospel, reggae, and world music with psychedelia.
Their hit songs were Touch Of Grey and Truckin’, among dozens others.
Alabama native Godchaux also lent her vocals to several chart-topping hit songs such as Elvis Presley’s Suspicious Minds and Percy Sledge’s When A Man Loves a Woman.
Her vocals were featured on other recordings by Boz Scaggs and Duane Allman, Cher and Neil Diamond.
A Grateful Dead singer has passed away from a long illness at the age of 78. Donna Jean Godchaux was in hospice in Nashville, Tennessee at the time of her death after battling cancer for many years, Rolling Stone reported on Monday
She was with the Grateful Dead during some of their most prolific years, which was from 1972 until 1979.
The honey-voiced crooner also performed with the Jerry Garcia Band and the short-lived Heart of Gold Band, all alongside her first husband, Keith Godchaux.
And blues singer also formed the Donna Jean Godchaux Band in 2006.
After Garcia died, she worked with the band again.
The star grew up in Alabama but moved to California in the 1960s for her career.
She met future fellow Grateful Dead member Keith Godchaux while in the Golden State. They wed in 1970.
Keith and Donna’s son, Zion ‘Rock’ Godchaux of BoomBox, was born in 1974.
Shortly after her husband’s death in 1980, she married bassist David MacKay (former Fiddleworms member and bassist for the Donna Jean Godchaux Band).
They moved to town she was born in – Florence, Alabama – to record at the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio.
