The Mary Jane Girls were an American girl group formed in 1983, best known for their songs "In My House", "All Night Long", "Candy Man", and their cover version of "Walk Like a Man". They were protégées of musician Rick James and disbanded in 1987. Joanne "Jojo" McDuffie was the lead singer, the others filling out the group's style and appearance. On the studio recordings, McDuffie was backed by session vocalists rather than the other Mary Jane Girls. The group released two albums in the 1980s, and recorded a third – which was shelved for decades but finally released in 2014, as part of a larger retrospective of Rick James' work. The group was inducted into the Rhythm & Blues Music Hall of Fame in 2019. Background Rick James was frequently backed in his studio recordings by vocalists Joanne "Jojo" McDuffie and the sisters Maxine and Julia Waters. For live performances, starting in 1979, James was backed by McDuffie along with Cheryl Bailey (who used the stage name Cheri Wells), Candice "Candi" Ghant and Kimberly "Maxi" Wuletich. Casually amongst the musicians, McDuffie, Wells, Ghant and Wuletich used the moniker Mary Jane Girls, a subgroup of James' backing band, the Stone City Band. The women learned choreographed dance routines and they practiced under a vocal coach. Career In 1983, James proposed to Motown that McDuffie be offered a solo career but miscommunication caused the label to sign an all-female group, which he determined would be the Mary Jane Girls. James filled the positions behind McDuffie with Wells, Ghant and Wuletich. He also wrote all the original songs and produced all the recordings. Often compared to the protégées of his rival Prince, Vanity 6, who debuted in 1982, James told Jet in 1983 that he had come up with the concept six years prior but shelved the idea for a lack of time. "I wanted there to be a Black female group in the industry that could express more reality with relationships to men. I wanted there to be Black girls who could really speak about love, the pain, money, power, hate and everything. Originally there were going to be three girls in negligees doing the punk thing." The Waters sisters and McDuffie sang all the parts on the group's eponymous debut album, Mary Jane Girls, released in April 1983. The album yielded their first R&B hits: "Candy Man", "All Night Long"