Overview
- The death was confirmed by representative Dennis McNally, who conveyed the family’s request for privacy and quoted Robert Hunter’s line, “May the four winds blow her safely home.”
- Before joining the Grateful Dead, she was an in-demand Muscle Shoals session singer whose credits include Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman” and Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds,” as well as work with Cher, Neil Diamond and Boz Scaggs.
- She joined the Grateful Dead in the early 1970s with her husband, keyboardist Keith Godchaux, and appears on Europe ’72, Wake of the Flood and Terrapin Station, along with renowned live recordings such as Cornell ’77 and the band’s 1978 Egypt shows.
- The couple left the band in 1979 and launched the Heart of Gold Band; Keith died from injuries sustained in a 1980 car accident soon after the new group’s first concert.
- Godchaux continued to record and perform in later decades, releasing the album Back Around in 2014 and a 2021 single titled “Shelter.”