Singer Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay, who helped shape the sound of the Grateful Dead during the 1970s and sang backup on No. 1 hits by Elvis Presley and Percy Sledge, died Sunday. She was 78.

The singer died in hospice care in Nashville, Tennessee, after a lengthy battle with cancer, her publicist, Dennis McNally, said in a statement.

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

Born Donna Jean Thatcher in Florence, Alabama, on Aug. 22, 1947, she began her career as a teenage studio singer in nearby Muscle Shoals.

Before she joined the Grateful Dead, Godchaux-MacKay sang backing vocals on Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman” in 1966 and on Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds” -- his last No. 1 hit -- and “In the Ghetto.” She also sang backup on recordings by Cher, Neil Diamond, Dionne Warwick, Ben E. King and Boz Scaggs.

In 1970, she moved to San Francisco, where she met pianist Keith Godchaux.

Initially, Godchaux-MacKay was not impressed with the Dead.

“That ragged sound?” Godchaux-MacKay said in a 2007 interview with The Baltimore Sun. “I didn’t think they could play. I figured, ‘These guys must be good-looking.’ So I checked the back of one of their album covers and went, ‘Nope, that’s not it.’”

After attending a local Dead show, she approached bandleader Jerry Garcia.

“I told Jerry that Keith needed to be in the band and I needed his home phone number, and I got his number,” she later recalled.

Within months, both were part of the group.

“I can’t believe the chutzpah we had,” Godchaux-MacKay told The Sun. “I didn’t know people did that to him all the time. But Jerry just always had his antennas up.”

Her vocals became a signature of the Dead’s live sound, featured on albums like “Europe ’72,” “Wake of the Flood” and “Terrapin Station.” They were also prominent on songs like “Eyes of the World” and “Playing in the Band.”

In the band’s “Blues For Allah” album in 1975, Godchaux-MacKay sang co-lead on “The Music Never Stopped” and the album’s title song.

Godchaux-McKay and her husband left the band in 1979 as their tenure was marred by exhaustion and substance use.

“Keith and I knew that we needed to get out of it,” she said. “How do you get out of the Grateful Dead? I had a 4-year-old son. We were both really exhausted. It wasn’t like we quit or were fired. It was both.”

Keith Godchaux died in an automobile crash on July 23, 1980. Godchaux-MacKay married bassist David McKay in 1981.

Godchaux-MacKay was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1994 as a member of the Dead. Later, she appeared periodically onstage with some of her former bandmates, including with Dead & Company.

“I was flying to San Francisco to do a show with Phil and listening to ‘Ripple’ through my headset, when I just started sobbing. The music still touched me deeply,” Godchaux-MacKay told The Edmonton Journal in a 2008 interview.

She continued releasing solo music under The Donna Jean Band and Donna Jean and the Tricksters and issued her final studio album in 2014, “Back Around.”

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