Donna Jean Godchaux-Mackay Is Grateful

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Hi, everybody. Southern Living has a new podcast featuring me, Steve Bender, aka The Grumpy Gardener. Each week on Wednesdays and Saturdays, I will be answering your burning gardening questions, sharing a plan of the week and gardening tips. You can't afford to miss it.

Follow Ask Grumpy on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss an episode. And check out southernliving.com forward slash ask grumpy for more information.

Sid Evans (0:40)

Welcome to Biscuits & Jam from Southern Living. I'm Sid Evans, editor-in-chief of Southern Living Magazine, and I have a confession for y'all. I've been a fan of the Grateful Dead since I was in high school, and today I am very excited to be talking with someone who performed with that band for some of their most formative years. Donna Jean Godchaux-Mackay got her start as a session singer when she was just a teenager in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and her voice appeared on iconic hits by Percy Sledge, Elvis Presley, Neil Diamond and others. Eventually, she moved to California in pursuit of adventure, and that's what she found when she met Jerry Garcia and joined the Grateful Dead. We'll talk about all that, her grandmother's delicious biscuits, and why her family calls her the forest gump of rock and roll on this week's Biscuits & Jam.

Well, Donna Jean Godchaux-Mackay, welcome to Biscuits & Jam.

Donna Jean Godchaux-Mackay (1:41)

Well, Southern Living, this is amazing that I'm talking to you and very glad to do so.

Sid Evans (1:50)

Well, it is a real honor for me to have you on this podcast. I have been a huge fan of the Grateful Dead for most of my life and I've been listening to your recordings for about 40 years. So it is very nice to talk to you in person.

Donna Jean Godchaux-Mackay (2:06)

Well, that lets you know how old I am.

Sid Evans (2:12)

And me.

Donna Jean Godchaux-Mackay (2:14)

Both, but still, here I am at age 75 and I cannot believe that it's been this long since I was in that band.

And here we are, still talking about it. And talking about it is great and I love it. And so let's go.

Sid Evans (2:34)

Well, I want to start out talking a little bit about your hometown of Florence, Alabama. You grew up in a kind of mythical place for someone who loves music.

Tell me a little bit about your hometown.

Donna Jean Godchaux-Mackay (2:49)

Well, I was born in Florence, Alabama and this is where I live right now.

And by the time I was 12 years old, I knew that I wanted to be a songwriter. I wanted to be a singer. I wanted some musical experience. And it just happened that stars fell on Alabama at that time.

They surely did. And when I was 12 years old, wrote my first song that got really any attention when I was on a local television talent contest. And I won for writing a song, singing it and playing piano on TV. And that alerted a couple of people in the Muscle Shoals area to send me to Rick Hall Studio, which was above this drug store in Florence, Alabama. And that's where I went into my first studio and I got the recording bug that just absolutely took me over. I saw all the wires and all the equipment and everything. And it was not only the singing part of it, it was the electronic part of it, the whole view of the music, the music industry just took my brain and never left.

As you can well tell, it never left. And it all started there at Rick Hall Studio in Florence, Alabama. And this was early 60s.

Sid Evans (4:27)

Now Donna Jean, I've heard you say that your dad played guitar a little bit. Was there a lot of music in your family?

Donna Jean Godchaux-Mackay (4:33)

You know, he did a little bit, but not professionally or anything that I could really draw attention to. But the fact that my dad loved the guitar and I heard chords and I heard music from an early age really gripped me. I had to have it.

And if I may go on for a second about this, when I was about six, maybe seven years old, something like that, and I wanted a piano, I just was so musically inclined all of my life. But my mother understood my love of music even at that age. I couldn't have a piano. My dad was in the Army. We moved and there was no room for anything that big in our house. And my mother understood me so much at that young age, at six years old, that she took glasses out of our cupboard and filled them each with different levels of water and gave me a spoon. I would make music from those glasses of water depending on the amount of water that was in the glass made a different tone. And I wrote music on those glasses.