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In 1981 Rick James found session singer JoJo McDuffie, then working in a record store, and pitched her to Motown’s Gordy imprint as a solo act. The label instead drew up a contract for a four-woman group, and James filled the slots with Cheri Wells, former disco singer Candice Ghant and Kimberly Wuletich. He publicly said the name came from Mary Jane candy, though McDuffie later confirmed it referred to marijuana. James assigned each woman a persona: street girl, supermodel, valley girl and leather-clad dominatrix.

The 1983 debut, with Candy Man and All Night Long, was a hit, but McDuffie sang the leads with session singers Julia and Maxine Waters on backgrounds while the credits named the other members. Wells left over James’s control and was replaced by Yvette Marine, and the 1985 album Only for You went gold on the strength of In My House. When James broke with Gordy Records in 1986, the finished third album, Conversations, was shelved, and the group disbanded by 1987.

• James owned the Mary Jane Girls trademark, so the women could not take the name with them.
• Yvette Marine sued Virgin Records in 1991, claiming her voice was blended with Paula Abdul’s lead on Forever Your Girl; the suit was dismissed in 1993.
• In 2013 the Rick James estate sued Wells and Wuletich to stop them touring as the Mary Jane Girls.
• Conversations was finally released in 2014 as part of a Motown retrospective.
• The group entered the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame in 2019.