Grateful Dead Singer Donna Jean Godchaux Dead at 78

Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay, a former member of the Grateful Dead who also sang on No. 1 hits for Elvis Presley and Percy Sledge, has died. She was 78.

A rep for Godchaux-MacKay confirmed her death in a statement shared with PEOPLE, saying she died at a hospice facility in Nashville on Sunday, Nov. 2 “after a lengthy struggle with cancer.”

“She was a sweet and warmly beautiful spirit, and all those who knew her are united in loss,” the statement read. “The family requests privacy at this time of grieving. In the words of Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, ‘May the four winds blow her safely home.’”

An Alabama native, Godchaux-MacKay started her career as a session musician before joining the Grateful Dead in 1971 alongside her husband, keyboard player Keith Godchaux.

“I was singing from pretty much as soon as I could talk,” she told AL.com in 2016. “I remember very distinctly when I was 6 years old, I knew I was going to be a singer and I would sit out on my back porch and sing to the top of my lungs every day.”

She sang background vocals on hits like Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman” and Elvis Presley’s 1969 single “Suspicious Minds,” both of which hit No. 1, as well as songs for Cher, Neil Diamond and Dionne Warwick.

Godchaux-MacKay told AL.com that working in the studio with Presley was “one of the most amazing times of my life,” and recalled the King being “so kind to us and encouraging and complimentary… And he looked great. I’m telling you, he was the most gorgeous human being I’ve ever seen.”

She eventually moved to California, and married Keith in 1970, with the two joining the Grateful Dead after she introduced herself to Jerry Garcia. They toured around the world with the band, including in the U.S., Europe and Egypt.

“It was great fun,” she told the outlet of playing with the Grateful Dead. “I loved singing with those guys and we had an absolute blast.”

By 1979, though, it was time for a change, and Godchaux-MacKay and her husband, who had welcomed son Zion in 1974, left the group.

“Keith and I, we were wasted. We were exhausted. And the band was exhausted with us,” she told Rolling Stone in 2014. “The band knew we had to be out of the band, and Keith and I had been talking about ‘How in the world do you quit the Grateful Dead?’ It was sad, but it was what needed to happen. It was turning into being not profitable for anybody. We needed to go, and they needed for us to go.”

After leaving the Grateful Dead, she and Keith formed the Heart of Gold Band in 1980, though it was short-lived. Tragedy struck in July 1980 when Keith died days after a car accident in California. He was 32.

In 1981, Godchaux-MacKay married musician David MacKay, and the two returned to Muscle Shoals, Alabama. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the Grateful Dead in 1994, and formed the Donna Jean Godchaux Band in 2006.

She is survived by her husband David, their son Kinsman and his wife Molly, her son Zion and his son Delta, her sister Gogi Clark and her brother Ivan Thatcher.