Mary Jane Girls

The Mary Jane Girls may have started out as Rick "Superfreak" James' backup singers, but the foursome became a bona fide group (under his tutelage, of course) just a couple of years later. James essentially invented the girls' personas as characters for his own live act, and wrote all the songs on their debut and sophomore efforts. In fact, the two camps were so intertwined that when James started to have legal troubles with Motown Records in the mid-'80s, the Mary Jane Girls also suffered. The group was dropped, and never recorded a third album for that, or any other, label.