Music: Soul sister

Years before becoming the only female member of the legendary traveling circus known as the Grateful Dead, singer Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay recorded with Cher, Neil Diamond, guitar god Duane Allman, Dionne Warwick, Solomon Burke, Boz Scaggs ... and Elvis Presley.

"Our little voice group was working in Memphis and our friend Mark James had written a song called 'Suspicious Minds,'" recalled Godchaux-MacKay, who brings her new band, Donna Jean and the Tricksters, to Minneapolis on Friday.

It was 1969, and the group, from Donna Jean's home base of Muscle Shoals, Ala., had just recorded a demo at Memphis' American Sound Studios. The King walked past an office where the demo was playing, stopped in his tracks and said, "I want that song. And I want those girls."

"When we got the call, we screamed bloody murder," Godchaux-MacKay recalled by phone from her home in northwestern Alabama. "He looked great. He was trim. He was just the most gorgeous creature I'd ever seen in my life.

"We did 'Suspicious Minds.' We did 'In the Ghetto.' And he was so kind, so sweet, so encouraging. We had a wonderful time with him. And when the sessions were all over, my friend Jeannie [Greene] and I went to the nearest International House of Pancakes and just screamed for two hours."

Godchaux-MacKay was just 12 when she began frequenting the Muscle Shoals studio. She witnessed early recordings by Aretha Franklin. The great Otis Redding was there, too: "Oh, my God, was he a presence."

At 15, she'd make a dash from high school to the studios, sometimes still in her cheerleader's skirt. By then she was singing professionally. She was part of a girls' vocal group that did background parts for Etta James, Ben E. King and Joe Tex. On other days, Wilson Pickett or the Staple Singers might be there. The studio and its musicians were in such high demand that even British bands such as the Rolling Stones and Traffic made their way to northwestern Alabama, to what Godchaux-MacKay calls "this little podunk hometown of mine," to see if the magic might rub off.

"I guess the stars just fell on Alabama or something," said Godchaux-MacKay, now 62.

Not only did she sing on "When a Man Loves a Woman," arguably one of the greatest records ever, but it was Godchaux-MacKay who brought Percy Sledge a copy of the Billboard magazine proclaiming the single No. 1 when Sledge was hospitalized with a kidney infection.

Playing in the band

But even as she grew in demand as a background singer, she thought, "There's got to be something more to this." She packed up and moved to California -- just truckin', and not caring whether she ever recorded again. She married pianist Keith Godchaux ... and heard the Grateful Dead.

Coming from a structured background where the music was "very arranged and very pristine," she said, "it just blew everything I ever thought out of the water," she said. "I couldn't believe the lyrics, the chord structures, how the harmonies blended. It changed my world, expanded my thinking." She told herself: "When I sing again, it's gonna be in that band."

In 1971, she sought out guitarist Jerry Garcia at a show and told him Keith was going to be the Dead's piano player. Soon he was, with Donna Jean following a month later.

It couldn't last forever, and the Godchauxs left the Dead in early 1979. It hadn't been all sugar magnolias and scarlet begonias. The constant touring, endless outside influences and strain of maintaining a marriage and raising a child in the anything-goes Dead universe proved too much.

A year later, Keith was killed in an auto accident. After marrying bassist David MacKay, Donna Jean moved back home, to Florence, Ala., where "I needed to take a break and raise my kids."

She'd known about the Zen Tricksters, a group of musicians who mixed original tunes with Dead covers. At a festival three years ago, they asked her to sit in and she discovered "what really fine musicians and fine people they are." She thought, "Maybe we could join forces here."

The group, in which all seven members sing, just released a CD that features several songs she wrote or co-wrote. Garcia often tried to persuade her to write, she said.

She still speaks lovingly about the Deadheads, the faithful who followed the band around the planet and are likely to make up much of Friday's audience.

"I'm humbled by it," she said. "After all these years, people still want to come out and see me. In this life, you can never predict. You make a plan that's a good guideline, but you never know what's going to happen -- the good things or the ill. Follow your heart and you'll be OK. You know: 'Inspiration, move me brightly.'

"And if you have one of those experiences where you have to go to the International House of Pancakes and scream, let it rip. Just let it rip."

Paul Levy • 612-673-4419