Godchaux joined the Grateful Dead in 1972 a year after her husband Keith and remained a member until 1979. While her role was primarily as a backup singer, Godchaux stepped into the foreground on Terrapin Station especially, singing lead or co-lead on “Dancin’ in the Streets,” “Passenger,” and “Sunrise.” She also sang on tracks like “The Music Never Stopped,” “Scarlet Begonias,” “France,” and “From the Heart of Me.” After leaving the Dead, Donna and Keith formed the Heart of Gold Band together, though Keith would pass away from head injuries he suffered in an auto accident in 1980.
Before she started singing with Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir, Godchaux was a prominent session singer in Muscle Shoals, just a stone’s throw from her childhood town, Florence, Alabama. She worked on “When a Man Loves a Woman” and “Suspicious Minds” before collaborating with the likes of Duane Allman, Cher, and Boz Scaggs. She wouldn’t perform with the Dead again until after Garcia’s passing in 1995. In 2006, she started Kettle Joe’s Psychedelic Swamp Revue, a group she later renamed Donna Jean & The Tricksters and, finally in 2009, the Donna Jean Godchaux Band. Since, she made appearances with RatDog, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Dark Star Orchestra, and Dead & Company. In 1994, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame alongside her Grateful Dead bandmates and, in 2016, was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame.
May the four winds blow you safely home, Donna.
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